The Problem
Cancer is a terrifying killer that claims more than 7.5 million lives every year around the world. In North America, one in every two males will develop cancer in their lifetime. For females, the odds are one in three.
In fact nearly everyone is affected by cancer in some way, because either they or someone they love will
likely have cancer at some point.
The best way to reduce the risk of death from cancer is widely believed to be a strategy of prevention through healthy life choices. The next best thing is early detection, because if we find cancer early as many as 9 in 10 may survive. By contrast, if we find cancer too late, far fewer, perhaps just 1 in 10 will survive.
Although the need to find cancer as soon as possible has been recognized for decades, early detection remains a formidable challenge. People with early stage cancer usually experience no symptoms, and consequently don’t know that they may have cancer. Early stage cancer can therefore only be found by using medical technologies to screen seemingly healthy people.
- sensitivity to early stage cancer
- specificity (low false positives)
- able to differentiate between malignant and benign tumors
- cost-effectiveness
- non-invasive, risk-free
To be successful, an early cancer detection
program must satisfy the following requirements:
No technology on the market today meets all of these requirements. Where progress toward early detection has been made, for example in the use of screening mammography, accuracies remain too low and costs too high to justify screening women not believed to be at higher risk of developing breast cancer. Yet the despite the availability
of screening mammography in the industrialized world, approximately 425,000 women die from breast cancer each year, largely because the disease was not found in time. Moreover, screening mammography
is simply not an option in many parts of the world where the cost is prohibitive or the procedure is objectionable.
Better tools for the early detection of all types of cancer are desperately needed.