Professor Paul Hofman's team (Nice University Hospital and Inserm Research Center at the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis) have developed a revolutionary technique for detecting lung cancer.
Published in the American scientific journal Plos One, their work constitutes a major advance in cancer screening.

Lung cancer is one of the most common and deadly forms of cancer: in France, there are 30 to 000 new cases each year. Men are more affected than women: more than 40 of them die from it each year.
As with other types of cancer, early diagnosis increases the patient's chances of survival.

The study
Professor Hofman's team followed 245 cancer-free subjects, 168 of whom suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and were considered "at-risk" patients.
Their goal: to develop a test that allows the detection of cancer cells even before the cancer can be detected by medical imaging.

What does this test consist of?
It's a simple blood test: 3 to 4 hours are enough to get the results.
Inspired by the vaginal smear technique, which can detect abnormal cells before the first symptoms of cervical cancer appear, the scientists searched the blood of study subjects for circulating tumor cells, which are true sentinels of lung cancer.
The difficulty lies in identifying and locating these cells: other so-called rare cells circulate in the blood, without being tumor cells. The analysis therefore requires a high level of expertise.

Is the test effective?
168 study subjects were at risk. Tumor cells were detected in the blood of 5 of them. All 5 developed lung cancer.
The sensitivity of the test is therefore 100%.

Who is affected by this test?
This test will mainly concern heavy smokers, who constitute the majority of patients at risk.

An experience to be validated statistically
Le Professor Hofman said: "We have proven the concept; now we need to validate it statistically through the national study we are proposing."
Recalling the high level of medical expertise required, he does not envisage any generalisation at first and confirms that the test will be reserved for high-risk people.

Despite all these limitations due to the novelty of the concept, this test constitutes an "extraordinary breakthrough in the field of invasive lung cancers."

Photo credit: Arzt mit Spritze bei Blutabnahme © Robert Kneschke – Fotolia.com

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