Jerry McGrath, a gastroenterologist at the Health Sciences Centre in the province’s capital, has called on Newfoundland and Labrador to establish a comprehensive colon cancer screening program. He said, “There’s going to need to be more access to colonoscopy because ultimately if people have a positive test on a screening [stool] test they’re going to need to have a colonoscopy done to examine the bowel and, you know, the wait lists are simply too long at present in this province to have a colonoscopy done.” According to Canadian Cancer Society, more than 400 new cases of colorectal cancer are diagnosed in the province annually, and every year colorectal cancer kills about 200 people in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Some methods of minimally invasive biopsy for breast cancer are nearly as accurate as surgical biopsy but have much less risk of harms, according to a new report funded by HHS’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The report, prepared by the ECRI Institute’s Evidence-based Practice Center under contract to AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program, compares traditional surgical biopsies with various types of “core needle biopsies.”

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SpectraScience Inc has been awarded Japanese Patent number 4361683 for its Optical Biopsy Forceps System and Method of Sampling Tissue. The invention provides for an optical lumen or lumens that are placed coaxially with the cutting jaws of a biopsy forcep. This allows for an optical reading to be taken from the exact same spot as a physical tissue sample. When used with the WavSTAT Optical Biopsy System, it becomes a diagnostic tool to detect pre-cancer and cancer as well as a therapeutic tool for removal of suspect tissue.  If necessary, the fiber optic can be easily removed so that other tools such as a cytology brush can be inserted coaxially.

SpectraScience Inc has received FDA approval for the WavSTAT System. The system is the first commercially available product that incorporates this innovative technology for clinical use. WavSTAT is indicated for use as an adjunct to lower gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy and is intended for the evaluation of polyps less than one centimeter in diameter, which the physician has not already elected to remove.

The FDA has approved a test for women who have developed tumors in the pelvic region known to need surgery. The test, OVA1, will be helpful for doctors in deciding if the tumor is an ovarian cancer and what should be their procedure to advance towards surgery. OVA1 can even detect ovarian cancer in women who have received negative results from standard cancer tests. The test, which has been developed by Vermillion Inc in collaboration with scientists at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, can also identify women whose surgical cases will benefit from the involvement of a gynecological oncologist.

Researchers from the University of California Los Angeles School of Dentistry are a step closer after finding substances present in saliva that indicate whether a patient has oral cancer. Researchers have found that low levels of two microRNAs in saliva are indicative of the presence of cancer. The findings published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research show that these microRNAs, which are by-products of the process cells go through to make proteins, are linked to oral cancer.

Israeli developers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology said that a sensor made with gold nanoparticles can detect lung cancer in a patient’s breath and may offer a diagnosis before tumours show up on an x-ray. The device, which the developers say would be cheap enough for everyday use by family doctors, detected lung cancer with 86% accuracy. It may offer a way to screen for a disease not usually diagnosed until it has spread and is no longer curable

Johns Hopkins researchers have developed a highly sensitive test to look for DNA attachments that often are early warning signs of cancer by using tiny crystals called quantum dots. This test, which detects both the presence and the quantity of certain DNA changes, could alert people who are at risk of developing the disease and could tell doctors how well a particular cancer treatment is working.

UroSens is on the verge of an exciting international breakthrough with a new diagnostic test for bladder cancer. UroSens develops and commercializes point-of-care tests for cancers of the urinogenitary tract for use in the urology clinic or doctor’s surgery. The initial target is bladder cancer, the fifth most common cancer in the UK with the highest recurrence rate of any malignancy. UroSens’ test requires only a sample of urine which is analysed for the presence of a specific protein using a highly sensitive antibody-based detection system.

The Canadian Association of Pathologists has called for the standardization of the kind of tissue testing that was at the centre of Newfoundland’s breast cancer testing scandal. Pathologists in Canada believe that tests critical to the treatment of breast cancer must follow national standards so patients can be confident of the consistency of the test results across laboratories.