Government to fund £120 blood test that could detect 12 most common cancers

The government will provide funding for a £120 blood test that has the potential to detect the 12 most common forms of cancer before symptoms develop.

The Mionco screening can identify 50 cancers before producing a false positive and is a form of the PCR test used during the Covid pandemic, according to the scientists involved in its development.

It checks the 12 most common forms of the disease: lung, breast, prostate, pancreatic, colorectal, ovarian, liver, brain, oesophageal, bladder, bone and soft tissue sarcoma, and gastric.

The government will provide £2.5m via the National Institute for Health and Care Research to improve the speed of the test, the Sunday Mirror reported.

The health secretary, Wes Streeting, a cancer survivor, told the newspaper it could be a “gamechanger” in revolutionising treatment of the disease in five years.

Streeting said: “Just a couple of drops of blood could tell you if you had lung, breast or bladder cancer, helping end months-long waits for tests and scans.

“These innovations could be gamechangers and life savers. But Tory underinvestment has left the NHS 15 years behind the private sector when it comes to tech. We have fewer scanners per patient than Greece.

“Your life chances rely on your postcode and whether you can afford to go private. I am determined to equip the NHS with cutting-edge technology so it benefits the many, not just the few.”

Scientists at Southampton University are understood to have used clinical information from 20,000 cancer patients to develop the screening.

The next stage involves improving the efficacy of the artificial intelligence involved, which analyses the test samples and biomarkers by entering 8,000 blood samples from people of diverse ethnic backgrounds.

Prof Paul Skipp from Southampton University said: “A test like this could save many lives, catching cancers much earlier. We hope to have an NHS test in five to seven years.”

Currently, breast, bowel, cervical and lung cancer have NHS screening tests but they involve a scan or a biopsy.

Skipp added: “The UK spends £800m a year screening for these four cancers, and an additional £91m is spent on false positive follow-ups.”

Last month, a £42m screening trial aimed at revolutionising the treatment of prostate cancer began in the UK.

Thousands of men will be involved in its initial phase, and several hundred thousand volunteers could be recruited as the programme progresses in coming years, say the trial’s organisers.