The following submission statement was provided by /u/chrisdh79:

From the article: It’s one of the most exciting areas of cancer research, but identifying the tumors through blood tests remains difficult, particularly for early-stage detection.

Despite breakthrough blood-test research for many types of cancers and specific sources such as lung and breast cancers, and the flourishing field of development of multi-cancer early detection (MCED) tests, screening generally still involves invasive biopsies of cells.

Researchers at the University of Technology (UTS) in Sydney, Australia, are hoping to change that, with the development of their new biotech, the Static Droplet Microfluidic (SDM) device. It can quickly detect circulating tumor cells (CTC) that have split from the cancer source to enter the bloodstream. It paves the way for very early detection, monitoring and treatment.

“A single tumor cell can exist among billions of blood cells in just one milliliter of blood, making it very difficult to find," said Majid Warkiana, professor from the UTS School of Biomedical Engineering. "The new detection technology has 38,400 chambers capable of isolating and classifying the number of metabolically active tumor cells."

The SDM can pick out tumor cells through a unique metabolic signature involving waste product lactate.

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