We are hoping that the cancer detection in timely manner is not possible because we now have a testing tool that allows you to detect bladder cancer from your pee without causing too much problems.
As #4 most common cancer, bladder cancer is known to be the most difficult to manage because of its invasive process, along with ridiculous price tag. For example, one diagnostic test costs $150,000.(1)
This video describes “cystoscopy”, an invasive diagnostic test for bladder cancer. Doctors decide how to treat their patients based on the nature of cancer (stage, location, etc.). One standard procedure is “cystoscopy”.
The procedure causes extreme discomfort and pain. Also, numerous tests suggest that there is a significant risk of infection.
Blood in urine (defined as haematuria) serves as a motive to doctors who would suggest cystoscopy to patients because hematuria is a symptom of early-staged bladder cancer. However, only 10% of haematuria patients are actually diagnosed with bladder cancer.
Therefore, developing safer bladder cancer diagnostics involving no puncturing or inserting an instrument into your body is extremely necessary. This might also save resource and money that went in to haematuria patients tested negative (90%) after cystoscopy.
Researchers all around the world had defined cancer fragments from urine or blood with significant accuracy. Sometimes diagnostic test kits was developed such as UroVysion.
*Urovysion was approved by FDA.
This video describes what biomarker (cancer fragment) is.
However, low accuracies of those FDA-approved tests prevented them to replace the cystoscopy.
Feber and his team (from UCL) took one more step by developing UroMark test that had equal accuracy to cystoscopy.
They built a high-accuracy DNA-based test that allowed detecting the cancer fragment in your urine in early stages of bladder cancer.
Most surprisingly, they predicted that their test could even be used to detect cancer fragment in later stages of cancer.
This was false for all existing FDA-approved tests.
In conclusion, UroMark is a novel diagnostic test that can replace an informative, but rather inconvenient cystoscopy.
For Your Information:
Visit the Cambridge Consultants blog on “Current challenges in cancer diagnosis and treatment” to gain a general insight on the subject matter.
