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Instead of testing blood every three months, sampling constantly, so a relapse is caught the week it starts.
MRD testing already detects relapse months before imaging, but sampling is episodic. Work on implantable and wearable sampling, microneedle interstitial-fluid collection, and at-home dried blood spots aims to shorten the interval, while urine and saliva ctDNA reduce the burden of venepuncture. Nothing in this class was validated for clinical use by 2026, and the question of what to do with an earlier signal is still open.
Frequent low-volume sampling of blood or interstitial fluid, with error-suppressed sequencing or targeted PCR, turns a periodic test into a trend line.
The blood test stratifies risk far better than stage or pathology. It supports treating ctDNA-positive patients and suggests ctDNA-negative patients gain little from chemotherapy, but because treatment was not randomised the de-escalation claim needs the randomised trials that are now under way.
It reframes the blood test from a yes-or-no residual disease result into a measure of how well chemotherapy is working and how fast a relapse is coming, which is what an escalation trial would need.
It showed that serial rather than single testing is what makes residual disease detection work, and it set the sampling schedule most later studies have used.
It changed how resistance is investigated: the first question at progression on osimertinib is whether T790M is still there, because losing it means the tumour is no longer EGFR-driven in the growing compartment and another EGFR inhibitor will not help.
Query for this technology: (TITLE:"Continuous and near-continuous ctDNA monitoring" OR ABSTRACT:"Continuous and near-continuous ctDNA monitoring") 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 Continuous and near-continuous ctDNA monitoring, not a curated reading list.
Shares Paths to cures: interception, eradication, control, Radical oncology: what could change the war by 2035, Diagnostics roadmap: stains → gene panels → blood tests that decide treatment and the tags frontier, promising.
Shares Paths to cures: interception, eradication, control, Radical oncology: what could change the war by 2035 and the tags frontier, promising.
Shares Paths to cures: interception, eradication, control, Radical oncology: what could change the war by 2035 and the tags frontier, promising.
Shares Paths to cures: interception, eradication, control, Radical oncology: what could change the war by 2035 and the tags frontier, promising.
Shares Paths to cures: interception, eradication, control, Radical oncology: what could change the war by 2035 and the tags frontier, promising.
Shares Paths to cures: interception, eradication, control, Radical oncology: what could change the war by 2035 and the tags frontier, promising.
Shares Paths to cures: interception, eradication, control, Radical oncology: what could change the war by 2035 and the tags frontier, promising.
Shares Radical oncology: what could change the war by 2035 and the tags frontier, promising.