Weizmann and Hebrew University team reports an experimental blood test that detected early breast cancer with 95% accuracy

An international team led by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has developed an experimental blood test that detected early-stage breast cancer with 95 percent accuracy when tumors were still confined to the breast and measured no more than two centimeters, the Weizmann Institute said.

The findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The work came from the laboratories of Prof. Efrat Shema at Weizmann and Prof. Guy Ron at Hebrew University, in collaboration with physicians at Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot.

The scientists tested the method on blood samples from 77 breast cancer patients who had been followed for at least five years at the Mayo Clinic in Florida, along with samples from 30 healthy women. They trained artificial intelligence models to distinguish between the two groups. Shema said the test "showed strong diagnostic performance regardless of breast density," and that it "performed just as well across different types of breast cancer" when the team expanded the number of patient blood samples to 188 with help from Sheba and Kaplan medical centers.

The test is not in routine clinical use. Using the epigenetic signature of a rare population of aggressive tumor cells, plus additional markers, the researchers also distinguished with 81 percent accuracy between patients whose cancer returned during follow-up and those who did not, the institute said, and flagged a recurrence risk in some patients who had been considered low risk by conventional measures.