Scientists develop 10-minute universal cancer test

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07214-w

Interesting article, but as usual the popular scientific article oversells the research. I read through the research article briefly and already noticed.

- The assay relies on methylation, which is cancer-type specific. The authors have tested samples from colorectal cancer and breast cancer, which are relatively similar on a molecular level.

- No comparison of the accuracy of the test is made to other techniques to detect cancer from circulating DNA, like ddPCR and cancer-SEEK.

- No mention is made of the stage of cancer for the samples they tested. It is easier to detect late-stage cancer, but patients with late-stage cancer may already have symptoms. Moreover, late stage cancers can also be found through imaging.

- Related to the previous point: the method could not detect tumor DNA after it was diluted to 1%. This may hamper the applicability to early detection of cancer in blood samples.