Lung Cancer Breakthrough: New Blood Test Detects Cancer One Cell at a Time

A team of scientists from the United Kingdom has developed a new blood test that could change the way lung cancer is detected and monitored. A new study talks about using the Fourier Transform Infrared, or FT-IR, microspectroscopy’ technique that can identify a single cancer cell in a blood sample. The research team – which consists of academics from University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust, Keele University, and Loughborough University – believe this breakthrough could enable doctors to monitor cancer in real time using a simple blood test. “Our team was able to detect a single lung cancer cell in a patient’s blood by combining advanced infrared scanning technology with computer analysis, focusing on the unique chemical fingerprint

of cancer cells,” said Professor Josep Sule-Suso, associate specialist in Oncology at UHNM and lead author of the study. “This approach has the potential to help patients receive earlier diagnoses, personalised treatments, and fewer invasive procedures, and it could eventually be applied to many types of cancer beyond lung cancer,” he added. Circulating tumour cells, also known as CTCs, are cancer cells that break away from a tumour and drift through the bloodstream. While they are tiny, these cells can give a lot of information about cancer, which includes how the dreaded disease develops, whether the treatment works, or if cancer may spread to other parts of the body.

How are CTCs identified?

The issue happens when it comes to finding these cells, which is the most difficult part. Most current tests are costly, complicated, and slow. And since CTCs change as they travel through the blood, many tests completely miss them. However, this new method takes a much simpler approach as it shines a powerful infrared light onto a blood sample, a bit like the light from a TV remote, just much stronger. Different substances absorb infrared light in their own unique way. CTCs have a specific pattern which is similar to that of a chemical fingerprint. By using a computer to analyse this pattern, scientists can quickly tell whether cancer cells are present in the blood. Scientists took samples from a 77-year-old lung cancer patient using advanced scanning technology and computer analysis. They were then able to pinpoint a single cancer cell among thousands of healthy blood cells, with the result independently confirmed by specialist testing. The findings of the study, published in the Applied Spectroscopy journal, say the technique is simpler and more affordable than existing approaches and uses standard glass slides already found in pathology labs to prepare blood samples for analysis under the infrared instrument, making it easier to adopt into everyday clinical practice.

What is next?

The team will now test this method in larger patient groups, with an aim to develop a rapid, automated blood test that could be integrated into different cancer care pathways. They welcome collaborations with clinical, healthcare, and industry teams – to support the validation, refinement and eventual adoption of FTIR-based diagnostic tools – and research groups developing new analytical technologies, data interrogation methods, or advanced computational tools, all of which play a vital role in accelerating this work.