A 52-year-old woman is at her annual physical exam. The physician assistant mentions he'll need two extra vials of blood for new cancer screening tests, one just FDA-approved, the other available as part of a clinical trial.
"But I already get mammograms and colonoscopies based on family history, and my husband gets his PSA screen for prostate cancer every year. So far, so good. Why do I need these new tests?" the patient asks.
"They can catch cancers much earlier, from DNA and proteins in your blood plasma, the liquid part. Including cancers much rarer than breast, colon, and prostate."
"Sure," says the patient, rolling up a sleeve. She'd be one of the first to have "multi-cancer early detection" – MCED – blood tests that zero in on clues that cancer cells shed into the bloodstream. A treatment begun early is more likely to work. An MCED blood test could be a gamechanger for people who haven't had cancer.