Cancer treatment has been inflicting so much pain to the patient including the need of surgical and needle biopsies to see the current development of tumors and cancer cell. But with liquid biopsies, they can monitor a person's health condition immediately.

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Liquid biopsy is a process where they capture the remnants of cancer cells or DNA that joins in the blood cells. Instead of getting the tumor tissue, only a blood sample is required from the patient. Though many doctors still haven't explored the full capacity of this process, many of them believe that it can lead to advancing the medicine they give to patients.

They have been doing the first noninvasive way of observing the cancer cell sample where doctors can record its genetic makeup and try to apply the drugs that targets the mutation to check whether there are changes on the cancer's growth. For the last two years, this test hasn't gained any popularity and only use by doctors during research.

Currently, they are already sold some of the tester and there are dozen of them under development process. Many people who have tried using the liquid biopsy confirmed that it helps them identify whether a person has a cancer or none.

One case has been solved in Philadelphia when Carole Linderman tried the liquid biopsy and found out that she has a breast cancer. The result has been given immediately unlike the month's process in normal cancer discovery.

At first, the test has been targeting a whole tumor cells in the patient's blood but the current process only use the free floating DNA of cancer cell and all they need to do is observe the mutation going on. This tester has been developing in the field of medicine and many companies like Sequenom (a San Diego Biotech) started to develop its own test.

 The test is usually done when the it's hard for them to get the patient's tissue for biopsy and when they aren't able to trace the root of cancer and the drugs has no effect on the patient and doctors have no idea what to do next, according to Dr. Scott Kopetz who is a colon cancer specialist at MD Anderson. He added that the test is much faster than the traditional process.

 There are still more work to be done on this test. Researchers continue to find a link on how these cells mutate and develop into different kinds of cancer. Though it is being used already, they are still working on how to upgrade the process and the system

TagsCure Cancer, Cancer, Tumor, Liquid Biopsy