Page 48
By SHERON
BOYLE
Lung tumour:
Rebecca Allison... and it’s saving lives by detecting
disease years before symptoms show
Simple blood test
that could spot the
deadliest cancer
(^) Daily Mail, Tuesday, March 3, 2020
lucky even,’ she says. ‘But I
kept thinking, why was my
blood test positive for cancer?
It niggled away at me.’
Rebecca was one of more
than 12,000 smokers to take
part in a trial of a test that can
detect lung cancer up to four
years before tumours show up
on scans — all from a few drops
of blood.
Around 47,000 Britons are diag-
nosed with lung cancer every
year, making it the most common
form of the disease. And, with
35,300 deaths a year — almost
100 a day — it kills more people
than any other cancer.
Most common in smokers, it
is usually symptomless in the
early stages. As a result, 80 per
cent of cases are not picked up
until late in the disease, when
it’s harder to treat.
Fewer than 5 per cent of
patients survive for five years or
more if their cancer isn’t picked
up until it is very advanced,
compared with 57 per cent
when it is detected early.
The new test aims to change
this by checking samples of
blood for seven antibodies —
proteins that are made by the
immune system to defend
the body against the cancer.
C
RucIAlly, these anti-
bodies are often present
when the cancer has
just begun to grow and
is years away from causing
symptoms or showing up in a
scan. A lung cancer tumour
n e e d s t o m e a s u r e a r o u n d
8mm to be detected on a scan
or X-ray.
R e b e c c a a n d o t h e r t r i a l
volunteers had a blood test,
called an EarlycDT-lung test
— and if this proved positive,
they underwent X-rays and cT
scans every six months.
Following her positive result,
Rebecca, a care-home manager,
had three scans all showing her
lungs were clear, until the fourth
— 20 months after the blood
test — yielded a positive result.
‘I was anxious before each
scan, then relieved. But my luck
ran out in October 2017 when a
5cm tumour showed up in my
upper left lung. I knew I had to
deal with it.’
She broke the news to her
children — Victoria, 40, and
Andrew, 38 — just before her
operation the following month,
d e t e r m i n e d n o t t o s h o w
her concern.
‘I secretly feared I would not
live to enjoy christmas with my
family. But the doctors told me
the cancer was at an early stage
and I had a good chance of
coming through it all.’
Rebecca underwent keyhole
surgery to remove the tumour,
but did not need chemotherapy
or radiotherapy. She now has
scans every six months.
‘I’ve been lucky. Without the
trial, I would be dead. This test
is a life saver,’ she says.
Dr Adam Hill prefers to call it
a game changer. He is chief
executive of Oncimmune, the
blood test diagnosis company
that developed the EarlycDT-
lung test, currently used in
2 4 countries including the u.S.
Worldwide tests have shown it
can detect lung cancer up to
four years before the tumours
become visible in scans.
‘Studies show 40 per cent of
lung cancers are diagnosed in
A&E when patients attend, a
common symptom being cough-
ing up blood,’ explains Dr Hill.
Although the EarlycDT-lung
test checks only for lung cancer,
t h e s a m e t e c h n o l o g y a l s o
underpins a test for liver cancer,
launched in 2018. Tests for
breast, ovarian and prostate
cancers are in development.
Results of the pinprick blood
test are available within four
hours and cost less than £200
per person privately. Oncim-
mune claims it can detect all
types of lung cancer at all stages
with high accuracy.
Rebecca was part of a trial
that targeted people aged 50
and over in Scotland, who had
smoked more than a packet of
cigarettes a day for 20 years
or more, as they are statistically
more at risk of lung cancer.
Of the 60 volunteers in the
trial who then went on to
develop lung cancer within two
years, more than 40 per cent
were diagnosed at stage one
and two, compared with only
27 per cent in standard clinical
practice. There was also a lower
death rate in this group.
Dr Hill says treating Rebec-
ca’s early diagnosis will cost the
NHS around £5,000, compared
with a bill in excess of £50,000
to treat an advanced lung
cancer patient with surgery,
drugs and other procedures.
‘A n d i t i s s o m u c h l e s s
traumatic on the patient, as
they may not have to go through
gruelling chemotherapy or
radiotherapy for up to a year
afterwards,’ he says.
Dr Hill is now hoping to
conduct uK-wide tests, involv-
ing as many as 200,000 people
with a history of smoking. In
the meantime, although the
test is used in private hospitals
across the uK, it still needs the
green light from the Depart-
ment of Health to be approved
for NHS use.
Another grateful pioneer of
the new test is 63-year- old
Shirley Dolan, a mother- of-
three from Dundee, the first
patient to be tested, diagnosed
and cured using the EarlycDT-
lung test.
The former nurse smoked up
to 30 cigarettes a day from her
teens to just hours before
undergoing surgery for lung
cancer in March 2014. It was
diagnosed when she had the
test after her GP suggested it
as part of a trial.
‘I couldn’t believe it as I did
not have a single symptom, yet
an X-ray confirmed I had two
tumours in my top right lung,
though one was thankfully
benign. The cancerous one was
between 3cm to 5cm long.’
S
HIRlEy had surgery
but needed no further
treatment. ‘I’ve never
t o u c h e d a c i g a r e t t e
since,’ she says. ‘I’ve been lucky
enough to get a second chance
at life.’
Sadly, when Shirley returned
to work at the hospital after her
operation, she learned that one
of her fellow theatre nurses had
been diagnosed with lung
cancer while she was away and
had died. She, too, had not
displayed any symptoms, but
her lung cancer was already at
a late stage when detected.
Dr Richard Roope, a senior
clinical adviser on the preven-
tion and early diagnosis of
cancer for cancer Research uK,
cautiously welcomes the Early-
cDT-lung test. ‘It has the
potential to be exciting, but
more research is needed to
decide who we should be test-
ing,’ he says. ‘We are at the
beginning of changes in how we
look for cancer that will lead to
more diagnostic options.
‘The uK has been the sick
man of Europe in the lung
cancer survival leagues, so any
development that can improve
detection is a good thing.’
Before surgery, Rebecca had
wrapped her family’s christmas
presents as she feared she
might not see christmas Day,
but on December 23, 2017, she
was given the best gift anyone
could receive — the all-clear.
‘That’s when I cried,’ she says.
like many who took part in
the trial, she is — in all senses
— breathing easier today.
■ Extra time — Portraits
of Hope and Survival from
Early Cancer Detection,
extratime.gallery
T
AKING on a vigorous
h i l l w a l k w i t h h e r
husband, or playing
with her two lively
grandchildren, Rebecca
Allison had never felt better.
The birth of Nathan, now eight, and
caitlin, six, had given Rebecca — a
smoker for more than 50 years — the
incentive she needed to quit her
30-a-day habit four years ago. She
felt so well that when her GP asked
her if she’d like to take a revolution-
ary blood test that could detect lung
cancer years before symptoms
appear, she didn’t think twice.
But two days later, the mother-of-
two was called to say she had
the disease. ‘I was shocked,’ says
Rebecca, 69, who lives in Glasgow.
‘After sharing a few tears with my
husband, Ben, we decided not to tell
our kids until we needed to. I vowed
to take life one day at a time.’
It was the start of a two -year
roller- coaster of emotions for
Rebecca, as the next day an X-ray
showed that her lungs were actually
clear of the disease. ‘I felt relieved,
‘Second chance’:
Shirley Dolan
Pictures: Grae
Me Hun
Ter