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Blood tests that read chemical marks on fragments of DNA shed by tumours; the marks tell cancer DNA from normal DNA and hint at where the cancer is.
Cancer cells carry characteristic DNA methylation patterns that survive in the cell-free DNA shed into blood. Methylation-based tests use bisulfite or enzymatic conversion followed by targeted sequencing to detect a cancer signal and predict its tissue of origin; the multi-cancer early detection test Galleri works this way, and Guardant's Shield, the first blood test approved by the FDA for colorectal cancer screening in 2024, combines methylation with other cfDNA signals. Methylation also underpins some minimal residual disease assays.
Extract cfDNA from plasma, convert unmethylated cytosines, sequence targeted regions, and classify methylation patterns against reference tumour and normal profiles.
Nothing in the corpus depends on this yet.
Dependencies are what this technology cannot be delivered without: manufacturing steps, instruments, software, upstream methods. See its full chain on the map.
A blood test screening for more than 50 cancers at once, before the FDA in September 2026.
For someone offered the test, these are the numbers that describe what a result means in an NHS population: about 1 in 100 tests came back positive each year, between 46 and 58 in 100 positives were cancer, and a negative result left about 1 in 100 with an undetected cancer within the year. The test found between a quarter and a third of all cancers diagnosed in a screening round, and about half to two thirds of the 12 cancer types it was designed to find. Whether finding them this way reduces late-stage diagnoses is the primary question, and this paper says only that the answer was no; the primary-endpoint paper had not appeared on Europe PMC by 23 September 2026.
Methylation-based screening is real but weakest exactly where pancreatic cancer needs it, at stage I, which is why high-risk surveillance rather than population screening carries the field here.
Query for this technology: (TITLE:"Cell-free DNA methylation tests" OR ABSTRACT:"Cell-free DNA methylation tests") AND (cancer OR tumor OR tumour OR oncology OR carcinoma OR lymphoma OR leukemia OR leukaemia OR myeloma OR sarcoma OR melanoma OR glioma). Results are unfiltered search hits about Cell-free DNA methylation tests, not a curated reading list.
Shares PATHFINDER 2, Galleri, NHS-Galleri, Multi-cancer early detection (MCED).
Shares PATHFINDER 2, Galleri, NHS-Galleri, Multi-cancer early detection (MCED).
Shares Clinical validation of a targeted methylation-based multi-cancer early detection test using an independent validation set, PATHFINDER 2, Performance of a multi-cancer early detection test in the randomized controlled NHS-Galleri trial, Galleri.
Shares PATHFINDER 2, Galleri, NHS-Galleri, Multi-cancer early detection (MCED).
Shares PATHFINDER 2, Performance of a multi-cancer early detection test in the randomized controlled NHS-Galleri trial, Galleri, NHS-Galleri.
Shares PATHFINDER 2, Performance of a multi-cancer early detection test in the randomized controlled NHS-Galleri trial, Galleri, NHS-Galleri.
Shares PATHFINDER 2, Galleri, NHS-Galleri, Multi-cancer early detection (MCED).
Shares Performance of a multi-cancer early detection test in the randomized controlled NHS-Galleri trial, Galleri, NHS-Galleri, Multi-cancer early detection (MCED).