Hunting for cancer in our blood

 Cancer often hides deep inside the body. Doctors, however, want to know everything about the tumor cells so they can choose medication that works best for a particular patient. Therefore, doctors often take a piece of tumor tissue to examine. Such a biopsy, however, is invasive and not always possible. Wouldn’t it be great if we can gather the same information (and more!) from a blood sample? What if we could even detect cancer in the blood before it has been diagnosed? Cancer researchers Daan Vessies and Iris van ‘t Erve from The Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam will discuss the latest developments, challenges and opportunities in the field of these so-called liquid biopsies.