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The results of a clinical trial, published Wednesday, in The New England Journal of Medicine, show that the blood-based screening test detects 83% of people with colorectal cancer. If the FDA approves it, the blood test would be another screening tool to detect the cancer at an early stage. ... Dr. Barbara Jung, president of the American Gastroenterological Association says the test could help improve early detection of colorectal cancer. "I do think having a blood draw versus undergoing an invasive test will reach more people, " she says. (Aubrey, 3/14)

Two early trials published Wednesday showed promise in treating one of the deadliest types of cancer, glioblastoma. The aggressive brain cancer, which took the lives of John McCain and Beau Biden, is only diagnosed at stage 4, and the five-year survival rate is around 10%. ... The two clinical trials published Wednesday were extremely small, conducted on just nine patients in total, and much more research is needed, with larger trials, to determine how effective the therapy might be in the long run. (Sullivan, 3/13)

More than 35 years after it was invented, a therapy that uses immune cells extracted from a person’s own tumour is finally hitting the clinic. At least 20 people with advanced melanoma have embarked on treatment with what are called tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), which target and kill cancer cells. The regimen, called lifileucel, is the first TIL therapy to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). And it is the first immune-cell therapy to win FDA approval for treating solid tumours such as melanoma. Doctors already deploy immune cells called CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T cells to treat cancer, but CAR-T therapy is used against only blood cancers such as leukaemia. (Reardon, 3/11)

New research shows that worsening metabolic syndrome – which is present in more than a third of adults in the United States – carries with it an increased risk of developing cancer. Metabolic syndrome is not a single condition, but rather the term applied when a person has three or more of the following markers: central or abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high serum triglycerides, and low serum high-density lipoprotein. (Gray, 3/13)

A tool that’s available as an online calculator played a key role in actress Olivia Munn’s discovery that she had breast cancer – even after she had “a normal mammogram,” according to a social media post. (Howard, 3/13)

Of the many young people whom Cathy Eng has treated for cancer, the person who stood out the most was a young woman with a 65-year-old’s disease. The 16-year-old had flown from China to Texas to receive treatment for a gastrointestinal cancer that typically occurs in older adults. Her parents had sold their house to fund her care, but it was already too late. “She had such advanced disease, there was not much that I could do,” says Eng, now an oncologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. ... Thousands of miles away, in Mumbai, India, surgeon George Barreto had been noticing the same thing. (Ledford, 3/13)

The Air Force is reporting the first data on cancer diagnoses among troops who worked with nuclear missiles and, while the data is only about 25% complete, the service says the numbers are lower than what they expected. The Air Force said so far it has identified 23 cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer, in the first stage of its review of cancers among service members who operated, maintained or supported silo-based Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. (Copp, 3/13)