LONDON, 16 January. - (ANA) - A new blood test could diagnose prostate cancer more accurately, paving the way for a national screening programme.
Doctors at the University of Cambridge are developing a more precise test to identify whether the cancer is present, how aggressive it is and how likely a patient is to need treatment.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK, leading to 12,000 deaths each year, but is the only major cancer without an NHS screening programme.
Existing prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests can detect the cancer in men with symptoms, but government scientific advisers say they are too unreliable to use for screening the general population, except men with certain gene variants.
PSA tests can miss some aggressive cancers, and can also lead to unnecessary stress and treatments by causing false positives or diagnosing very slow-growing cancers that do not affect a patient’s health or life expectancy.
Researchers hope a more accurate test would enable more men to be screened for the disease and get the right treatment.
Dr Harveer Dev of the university’s Early Cancer Institute, the lead researcher, said: “We don’t have the right combination of tests in order to be able to deliver for patients in the right way [at the moment]. Although we’re still in the development phase [of the new blood test], we’re getting really promising results.”
At the moment, men without symptoms can request PSA tests from their GP, but family doctors cannot proactively offer them.
The Telegraph is campaigning for the introduction of targeted screening for those most at risk, including black men and men with a family history of the illness.
But after a review this autumn, the UK National Screening Committee (UKNSC), which advises the Government, recommended screening should be offered only to men with particular gene variants, because of concerns about the reliability of PSA tests.
The draft recommendation is now open to public consultation, with Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, vowing to “thrash out” the arguments to ensure the right decision was made.
If more accurate testing methods become available, it could stop concerns about test reliability from preventing a national screening programme. The test under development detects DNA methylation markers – a type of “debris” ejected by cancer cells into the bloodstream.
By analysing the quantity and type of these markers in the blood, doctors can work out whether cancer is present and how fast-growing it is. This could mean men with raised PSA levels would know whether or not they needed treatment without having to undergo intrusive biopsies.
Previously, scientists have struggled to detect these markers for prostate cancer as they are in such tiny quantities in the blood, but the new test checks for thousands of different signals at once, which makes it more efficient.
Researchers are testing its accuracy using blood samples taken from more than 1,000 men from Europe and Africa.
Many of the samples were donated to researchers up to 30 years ago, with follow-up work to find out whether the donors went on to develop cancer. This means scientists can check if the test detects early signs of cancer accurately.
Dr Dev said the test could pick up signals that showed two things – “one, do you have a cancer or not? And two, how lethal is it?”
His team is planning to start clinical trials in UK patients within the next 18 to 24 months. Initially, the trials will examine when the blood test should be best used during screening – for example, whether it is most useful before or after a PSA test.
Dr Dev said the new test would not replace existing tests, but would be an additional tool to give patients a more accurate diagnosis.
Dr Naomi Elster, the director of research at Prostate Cancer Research, which is supporting the study, said: “While many lives have been saved through picking up cancers with our current methods, there absolutely is space for even more accurate tools.
“Dr Dev is working on a very clever new test, which can pick up changes in whether some genes have been switched on or switched off. This not only tells us if the cancer is there. It could also tell us how dangerous the cancer is – vital information to make sure it is treated in the right way.
“The fact that all of this could be possible through one simple blood test makes it easy to roll out, and gives the patient both clarity and dignity.” - (ANA) -
AB/ANA/16 January 2026 - - -
