A panel of blood proteins can identify early cancers with great accuracy, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Blood proteins can be used to not only detect early cancers in both men and women, but also to localize them the majority of the time, a new study reports. Kimmel Cancer Center director William Nelson at Johns Hopkins says the numbers are persuasive.

Nelson: They came up with two panels, one to be used for men the other be used for women, of 10 proteins each. In this cohort a specificity of 99% they could detect the cancers that a sensitivity of about 93% that's the male panel for the cancers in men and about 84% that's the female panel and they could build larger panels that were 150 protein analytes that could assign where to look for the cancer.  :31

Nelson says early detection is key since even a very small tumor already has billions of cancer cells with a number of mutations, so assessing an easily obtained blood sample has the potential to be very helpful. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.