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In light of the increasing complications of cancer cases around the world, ground breaking techniques have surfaced that can diagnose cancer from a single drop of blood or a home test that requires a drop of saliva.

According to the Telegraph, “A 10-minute cancer test which can be taken at home using just a drop of saliva is being developed by scientists.”

The University of California oncology professor, David Wong, said “it is possible to detect tumor DNA when is it circulating in bodily fluids – an approach known as a liquid biopsy.”

According to the professor, “The saliva test is 100 per cent accurate and is so simple that it could be carried out at a pharmacist, the dentist or even in the privacy of someone's own home if they were concerned.”

Professor Wong's tests have shown that just a single drop of saliva contains enough data to give a definitive diagnosis as soon as a tumor develops. Also, the test is accessible to all people, as it costs around just £15.

Earlier in October 2015, the VUMC Cancer Center researchers in Amsterdam uncovered that they have developed a “magical” technique to detect cancer. According to the source, Lead researcher of the center, Tom Wurdinger and his team discovered that thrombocytes or platelets in the blood from cancer patients contain unique RNA markings, which helps carry out DNA’s blueprint instructions, of the specific tumor.

The researchers studied blood samples from more than 200 cancer patients which had various diagnoses and prognoses and they were able to determine not only the presence of cancerous cells, but also which type of the cancer they had and if it had metastasized to other parts of the body.

The ability to detect cancer in the blood or saliva, also called liquid biopsy, is a major advantage for the early diagnosis and detection of cancer cells. Testing one drop of blood, the researchers can detect different types of cancer at an early stage.

Liquid biopsies are non-invasive blood tests that detect circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and fragments of tumor DNA that are shed into the blood from the primary tumor and from metastatic sites.

The test looks for genetic mutations in blood plasma which are consistent with a tumor.

Usually, cancer detection methods are time consuming and often expensive. These rely on scans and tissue biopsies. Also, such traditional tests cannot detect the disease at early stages. For instance, CT scans can only detect relatively large tumors that are usually in advanced stages.

Although this it is still in an early experimental phase, the teams are currently working on a fast, cheap and usable blood test for public use that is expected to be available by the year 2020.

The newly developed tests that can be considered as a revolution in the science of oncology, have been tested on most common types of cancer and the techniques provides an innovative combination of powerful computer algorithms in the diagnosis of the cancer through the single drop of blood or saliva.