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Some malignancies already are metastatic and incurable when they first become clinically apparent. Because tumors often shed cells and cell-free DNA into the blood long before they become clinically apparent, various blood tests for early detection are being investigated.
A French team reported a blinded test of a highly sensitive quantitative polymerase chain-reaction (PCR) technique on cell-free DNA. The PCR they employed detects mutations in the KRAS and BRAF oncogenes, which are associated with cancer induction. The results from circulating DNA in blood were compared with those from the tumor tissue DNA (the gold standard). In 95 patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (tumors that frequently contain these mutations), sensitivity and …