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testing

A blood test may catch colorectal cancer before it's too late

A scientist works on a blood test in the Ajay Goel Lab, one of many labs that are developing blood tests to screen for different types of cancer.

Ajay Goel Lab

Soon it may be possible to find different types of cancer earlier than ever through a simple blood test.

Among the many blood tests in development, researchers announced in July that they have developed one that may screen for early-onset colorectal cancer. The new potential screening tool, detailed in a study in the journal Gastroenterology, represents a major step in noninvasively and inexpensively detecting nonhereditary colorectal cancer at an earlier and more treatable stage.

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Susan Kreimer
Susan Kreimer is a New York-based freelance journalist who has followed the landscape of health care since the late 1990s, initially as a staff reporter for major daily newspapers. She writes about breakthrough studies, personal health, and the business of clinical practice. Raised in the Chicago area, she holds a B.A. in Journalism/Mass Communication and French, with minors in German and Russian, from the University of Iowa and an M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Security workers with detection dogs walking in airport terminal

Security workers walk with detection dogs in an airport terminal.

Viacheslav Lakobchuk/Adobe Stock

Asher is eccentric and inquisitive. He loves an audience, likes keeping busy, and howls to be let through doors. He is a six-year-old working Cocker Spaniel, who, with five other furry colleagues, has now been trained to sniff body odor samples from humans to detect COVID-19 infections.

As the Delta variant and other new versions of the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerge, public health agencies are once again recommending masking while employers contemplate mandatory vaccination. While PCR tests remain the "gold standard" of COVID-19 tests, they can take hours to flag infections. To accelerate the process, scientists are turning to a new testing tool: sniffer dogs.

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Puja Changoiwala
Puja Changoiwala is an award-winning journalist and author based in Mumbai. She writes about the intersections of gender, crime, technology, social justice and human rights in India. She tweets @cpuja.
An At-Home Contagiousness Test for COVID-19 Already Exists. Why Can’t We Use It?

Bobby Brooke Herrera, the co-founder and CEO of e25Bio, demonstrates the company's rapid paper-strip test for detecting the coronavirus.

(Screenshot of demonstration at https://rb.gy/j4hsfc)

You're lying in bed late at night, the foggy swirl of the pandemic's 8th month just beginning to fall behind you, when you detect a slight tickle at the back of your throat.

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Kira Peikoff

Kira Peikoff was the editor-in-chief of Leaps.org from 2017 to 2021. As a journalist, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Nautilus, Popular Mechanics, The New York Academy of Sciences, and other outlets. She is also the author of four suspense novels that explore controversial issues arising from scientific innovation: Living Proof, No Time to Die, Die Again Tomorrow, and Mother Knows Best. Peikoff holds a B.A. in Journalism from New York University and an M.S. in Bioethics from Columbia University. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two young sons. Follow her on Twitter @KiraPeikoff.

Saliva Testing Offers Easier and Earlier Detection of COVID-19

Dr. Andrew Brooks of RUCDR Infinite Biologics holds up a saliva sample.

(Photo credit: Nick Romanenko/Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)


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Judah Freed
Judah Ken Freed is an award-winning author, seasoned journalist and book publishing consultant based in Denver. His two thousand published articles and essays have run in local and global publications from Westword to Huffington Post to The Sun. A futurist at heart, he pioneered coverage of the internet and interactive TV for the top media industry trade magazines in the USA and Europe (Multichannel News, TV Technology, Euromedia, Inter@ctive Week, others). His interviews with media visionaries, and his writings on the social effects of new media, drew calls to speak on four continents. His writings on global thinking, featured on BookTV, won 2007 and 2012 Nautilus Awards for best social change books. Inspired by being a Stage IV cancer survivor, and informed by his work as the Director of Publishing for RIP Medical Debt, he is keen to write about innovations in the life sciences for leapsmag. Follow him at JudahFreed.com or @judahfreed.
Antibody Testing Alone is Not the Key to Re-Opening Society

Immunity tests have too many unknowns right now to make them very useful in determining protective antibody status.

(© tilialucida and Grispb/Adobe)


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Angela Rasmussen
Dr. Angela Rasmussen uses systems biology techniques to interrogate the host response to viral infection. She has studied a huge range of viral pathogens, from the “common cold” (rhinovirus) to Ebola virus to highly pathogenic avian influenza virus to SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19. By combining current classical approaches to modeling infection and pathogenesis with sequencing technology and machine learning, Dr. Rasmussen and her colleagues and collaborators have identified new host mechanisms by which viruses cause disease.
BREAKING: The First U.S. Test to Detect If a Person Has Potential Immunity to COVID-19 Was Just Developed

Testing for immunity to COVID-19 will allow frontline health workers to safely go back to work, knowing they can't spread the disease.

(© chompoo/Adobe)


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Kira Peikoff

Kira Peikoff was the editor-in-chief of Leaps.org from 2017 to 2021. As a journalist, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Nautilus, Popular Mechanics, The New York Academy of Sciences, and other outlets. She is also the author of four suspense novels that explore controversial issues arising from scientific innovation: Living Proof, No Time to Die, Die Again Tomorrow, and Mother Knows Best. Peikoff holds a B.A. in Journalism from New York University and an M.S. in Bioethics from Columbia University. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two young sons. Follow her on Twitter @KiraPeikoff.