About 363,000 new cancer cases are reported in the UK every year, according to Cancer Research UK, with the disease causing 165,000 deaths annually.
Early signs of cancer can appear years or even decades before diagnosis, according to the most comprehensive investigation to date of the genetic mutations that cause healthy cells to turn malignant.
What’s extraordinary is how some of the genetic changes appear to have occurred many years before diagnosis, long before any other signs that a cancer may develop, and perhaps even in apparently normal tissue.
The study revealed that about half of the earliest mutations occurred in just nine genes, meaning there is a relatively small pool of common genes that serve as triggers for cells to diverge from healthy development to a path towards cancer. It might be possible, in future, to pick up such mutations using so-called liquid biopsies – genetic tests that detect mutations in free-floating DNA carried in the blood that can indicate the presence of tumors elsewhere in the body.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/05/signs-of-cancer-can-appear-long-before-diagnosis-study-shows
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