Game-changing blood test may save more than 100,000 a year from unnecessary chemo

Melbourne researchers have developed a game-changing blood test that may save as many as 100,000 people a year from unnecessary chemotherapy.

About 20 per cent of state-two colon cancer patients will relapse, but until now there was no way to accurately identify who was at risk, resulting in many receiving chemotherapy as a precaution.

Researchers at Melbourne’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and America’s Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Centre have developed a test which changes that.

“We do a blood test after the surgery and say this person we can safely monitor, a very low risk of recurrence, you definitely don’t need to have chemotherapy,” Professor Peter Gibbs from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute told Ross and Russel.

“There’s also a group that look pretty benign, look like they have a low risk of occurrence, and then they have a positive blood test  so we can say … you need to have chemo.”

The test is more than 10 years in the making, and will be available to patients from later this year.

It’s hoped the test will also be able to test the risk of relapse for other types of cancers including breast, bowel and lung.

Press PLAY below to hear about how the game-changing test works