The U.S. is gearing up for a national trial to assess the effectiveness of various blood tests in detecting cancer early on, MIT Technology Review reported Sept. 12.
Multiple companies have developed these tests, which are designed to spot early signs of cancer based on blood drawn from a patient's arm, but none has received FDA approval.
The National Cancer Institute will run the trial and will begin enrolling participants in 2024, testing the effectiveness of the blood tests among 24,000 individuals over a four-year pilot study. If successful, it will become a clinical trial nearly 10 times as large, according to a Sept. 12 White House news release.
In a recent speech, President Joe Biden highlighted the importance of these tests to the Cancer Moonshot initiative, a federal goal to cut U.S. cancer deaths in half over the next 25 years.