Blood Test to Detect Breast Cancer Could Be Five Years Away

A blood test that may be able to detect breast cancer up to five years before symptoms develop could be available by 2025 if development is fully funded, U.K. researchers said.

Doctors at the Centre of Excellence for Autoimmunity in Cancer at the University of Nottingham compared blood samples from 90 patients being treated for breast cancer with the same number from a control group without the disease to measure the body’s immune response to substances produced by tumor cells. They’re now testing samples from 800 patients for nine markers and they expect the accuracy of the test to improve.