Using AI technology, the blood undergoes an examination that looks for signs or signals of cancer patterns in the DNA of cells that have ended up in the blood after cell death. The complex test was made possible by the fact that cancer itself is ‘simple’.
“Cells start dividing and growing at a very, very fast rate, and that’s where tumors are created from certain different types of cells that just go a little crazy, and they grow very quickly,” said Dr. Nord. “When that happens, they also die very quickly, and so their DNA, that specific DNA associated with the cells that have died around cancer, enters the blood system.”
When a cancer cell dies in the body, that cell’s DNA begins its own journey through the bloodstream. Now that technology has been able to track this journey, it is easier to tell if cancer exists in the body, even when someone feels completely healthy.
However, the cancer signals do not only determine whether there is cancer.
“It can then recognize whether the cancer site of origin is considered a pancreatic cancer site of origin, a liver cancer site of origin, an esophageal or throat cancer site of origin,” says Justin Lorentz, certified genetic counselor and interim lead for genetics at Medcan. “So the value of a cancer is that A) cancer is detected and B) the origin is predicted.”
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