rocket_randall t1_jaeo68z wrote on February 28, 2023 at 10:00 PM

Reply to comment by fluorescentpuppy in Researchers have developed a new device that can detect and analyse cancer cells from blood samples, enabling doctors to avoid invasive biopsy surgeries, and to monitor treatment progress by giuliomagnifico

A boutique genetics company I used to work for was researching and fundraising off the same idea. The way the director of bioinformatics at that job described it to me as akin to tapping into the sewer line for a small city and from a random sample being able to ascertain whether or not anyone in the city ate natto the previous evening, and even then it's another matter entirely to identify in which home the natto was eaten. He was highly skeptical of it ever delivering the claimed results without some major advancement in technology, and every one of these press releases seems more or less the same as what I was reading internally almost a decade ago. Then again I am just a software guy and not someone with training or expertise in this field.

hlx-atom t1_jaeqdm1 wrote on February 28, 2023 at 10:15 PM

Sure, but there are methods to amplify signal that the analogy is missing. The amplification can be imprecise which leads to false positives and negatives.