Johnson & Johnson and Massachusetts General Hospital say they are developing and marketing a blood test that could find a single cancer cell in blood.
Dr. Mehmet Toner, director of the BioMicroElectroMechanical Systems Resource Center in Massachusetts General's Center for Engineering in Medicine, says it could be five years before the test is on the market but its implications for patients are significant, CNN reported Monday.
"It is very big," Toner says in a statement. "It has the potential to turn cancer into a chronic disease, because we can monitor patients individually and respond with treatment to the genetic makeup of their cancer."
Toner says the test would be an easy-to-administer, non-invasive blood test that would analyze the genetic makeup of the cancer cells.
The cancer cells detach from a tumor and circulate at low levels in the blood. During the test, they are counted and analyzed to give prognoses about some types of metastatic cancers, Toner sai.