Scientists have developed a new blood test that could detect the signs of pancreatic cancer in less than an hour. Pancreatic cancer is tough to cure because it is usually not discovered until it has reached an advanced stage. The test, described in the journal ACS Nano, can rapidly screen a drop of blood for biomarkers of pancreatic cancer. It can provide results in less than an hour.
"An important step towards being able to cure diseases that come out of nowhere, like pancreatic cancer, is early detection," said an assistant project scientist at the University California, San Diego in the US. "We envision that in the future, physicians might perform this type of test using a quick finger stick to diagnose patients who may not know they have the disease yet," he said. To screen for pancreatic cancer in the blood, researchers are developing new methods that involve collecting and…
