Hopes that a “revolutionary” cancer blood test could soon be rolled out on the NHS have been dashed after a trial failed to achieve its main goal. The Galleri test looked for tiny fragments of tumour DNA in the blood, which can reveal the presence of the disease before symptoms emerge. It was evaluated in a three-year study of more than 142,000 NHS patients aged 50 to 77.
Half had the blood test annually, while the rest underwent standard NHS screening. The £150million trial was designed to find out if using the test could reduce the number of cancers diagnosed late, at stages three and four. It failed to meet this primary goal. However, researchers claimed there were other positive signs.
The number of cancers diagnosed at stage four alone fell by more than a fifth. Sir Harpal Kumar, chief scientific officer at the test’s manufacturer Grail, said: “This was outweighed by an overall increase in the number of stage three cancers.
“We believe the stage three increase was driven in part by a number of stage four cancers being shifted to earlier stages.”
The test can detect more than 50 different types of cancer. The trial focused on 12 types of cancer that account for around two thirds of cancer deaths.
In 2021, former NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard said the Galleri test could “mark the beginning of a revolution in cancer detection and treatment here and around the world”.
The mixed results were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual conference in Chicago. The organisation’s chief medical officer Julie Gralow said the test “will not get approval in the NHS based on this data”.
Professor Richard Houlston, of The Institute of Cancer Research in London, warned that the researchers risked “moving the goal posts” by highlighting positive signs despite missing their primary goal.
He said the only reliable evaluation for such a blood test would be a lengthy trial which looked at patients’ survival rates.
But he added: “The problem is, that to run such a trial to completion would take close to two decades…and it means that by the time the trial is complete the technology will likely be obsolete.”
Professor Peter Johnson, national clinical director for cancer at NHS England, said: “Finding cancers at an earlier stage is central to the National Cancer Plan, and the NHS will explore every opportunity to detect more cancers sooner and save more lives.
“We look forward seeing the data from the trial in detail, to help us make decisions on what this could mean for the NHS in the future.”
This story originally appeared on Express.co.uk
