A new blood test with the ability to quantify cancerous tumor cells in the bloodstream was developed this spring by researchers at UW Medicine and Seattle biotech company RareCyte, Inc.
According to Dr. Daniel Sabath, professor of laboratory medicine and pathology at UW, this work has been decades in the making.
“In the early 2000s we were interested in whether or not we could make a test that could detect breast cancer cells that were circulating in the blood,” Sabath said. “But in 2005, CELLSEARCH was released and approved by the FDA.”