A blood test for bowel cancer will be trialled on NHS patients as part of a government plan to improve survival rates by finding the disease “earlier, faster and cheaper”.
The test, developed by a team at the University of Southampton, uses AI to analyse blood samples for tiny fragments of genetic material from tumours called microRNA.
It will be trialled on 8,000 patients, looking for 12 common types of cancer: bowel, lung, breast, prostate, pancreatic, ovarian, liver, brain, oesophageal, bladder, gastric, and bone and soft tissue sarcoma. If successful, the blood test could be rolled out as part of routine NHS care aiming to find cancers at an early stage before they spread around the body.
It means that patients could be spared
