Amos Tanay (left) and Liran Shlush
Cancer is a complicated disease. It’s not one but many, and as such leaves various bio-evidence behind after it starts wreaking havoc on our body. Some cancers, but not all, can be detected by a blood test. My dad’s cancer, when it started as prostate, was detectable in a PSA test, but only when the cancer had progressed to stage 4. By the time he had developed another type of cancer, liver cancer, it was not detectable in the blood. Doctors gave him tests, said the pain isn’t cancer, and we waited for an MRI to find muscle or bone damage. The MRI found the cancer.
But scans, biopsies, waiting for biomarkers for specific tests have risks. Waiting “too long” makes dealing with cancer harder. So an easier blood test that can find cancers such as leukemia in the blood would be a godsend. New research published in the prestigious journal Nature, reports on it. The test is on aging and there are a range of applications making it possibly part of an arsenal by blood biohackers looking to live forever.
Related: Is our diet feeding a cancer causing bacteria?
What if a blood test could reveal the pace of our aging – and the diseases that may lie ahead? The labs of Profs. Liran Shlush and Amos Tanay at the Weizmann Institute of Science have been conducting in-depth studies into the biology of blood to better understand the aging process and why some people become more susceptible to disease over the years.
Their research teams, made up of physicians, biologists and data scientists, have been tracking changes in the blood-forming stem cells, including the emergence of genetic changes in these cells in about one-third of people over the age of 40. These changes not only increase the risk of blood cancers such as leukemia, but have also been linked to heart disease, diabetes and other age-related conditions.
In a new study published this month in Nature Medicine Shlush and Tanay present findings that may lead to an innovative blood test for detecting a person’s risk of developing leukemia. This test may potentially replace the invasive, painful and invasive test of bone marrow sampling.
The study focused on myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), an age-related condition in which blood stem cells fail to properly mature into functional blood cells. Diagnosing MDS and assessing its severity is crucial, as it can lead to severe anemia and may progress to acute myeloid leukemia, one of the most common blood cancers in adults. Until now, diagnosis has relied on bone marrow sampling, a procedure that requires local anesthesia and can cause discomfort or pain.
The findings are already being tested in a large-scale clinical trial at several medical centers around the world
In the new study, a research team led by Dr. Nili Furer, Nimrod Rappoport and Oren Milman, in collaboration with physicians and researchers the scientists showed that rare blood stem cells – which occasionally exit the bone marrow and enter the bloodstream – carry diagnostic information about MDS.
The researchers demonstrated that with a simple blood test and advanced single-cell genetic sequencing, it is possible to identify early signs of the syndrome and even assess a person’s risk of developing blood cancer. Could this info spur a person to eat better, exercise more regularly and avoid cancer altogether?
The researchers also discovered that the migrating stem cells can serve as a clock for our chronological age, and that in males, their population changes earlier than in women in a way that increases the risk of cancer. This finding may explain the higher prevalence of blood cancers among men. The scientists believe that using the test to diagnose MDS and leukemia is only the beginning, and that in the future it could be applied to a range of other blood-related disorders. The current findings are already being tested in a large-scale clinical trial at several medical centers around the world.
