Is a Blood Test for Multiple Cancers Hope or Hype?
A potential breakthrough in screening offers the promise of early detection and treatment of a killer. Here’s what you need to know.
Promising data from Grail Inc. showed its blood test Galleri was able to detect otherwise hard-to-find tumors.
Photographer: Andrew Brookes/Cultura RFMore than half a million Americans die of cancer each year, matching the toll of Covid-19 to date on an annual basis and making it one of the nation's biggest killers. But now there’s hope that a simple blood test could change that by detecting tumors earlier when they’re easier to treat.
Grail Inc., a biotechnology startup, launched a blood test called Galleri in the U.S. in June and published data validating its ability to detect otherwise hard-to-find tumors. While blood tests already exist for individual cancers, Grail's caught 13 types of the disease in a real-world experiment. If these tests prove out it could slash cancer's burden so unsurprisingly, the news got a lot of attention. But is it more hype than hope? There’s promise, for sure. It's essential, though, to acknowledge some realities of cancer screening that may hold these tests back.