Test To Spot If Cancer Has Spread

A test that measures how stretchy cells are could revolutionise the way doctors spot whether cancers have spread, say German researchers. The laptop-sized gadget can give a diagnosis using as few as 50 cells and avoids the need to cut out tissue. The University of Leipzig inventors, who spoke at a conference in Warwick on Tuesday, said it was 1,000 times more accurate than traditional tests. The same technology could also be used to find stem cells in blood, they said. But cancer experts stressed that the technology was still its infancy and that it would not replace conventional cancer tests yet.