A urine test caught 92 percent of bladder cancers

An at-home urine test detected 92 percent of bladder cancer cases in an NHS trial of nearly 1,000 patients across seven hospitals in England and Scotland. When the result came back negative, the patient had a better than 99 percent chance of being cancer-free. The test, called Galeas, was developed at the University of Birmingham with funding from Cancer Research UK and licensed to the diagnostics company Nonacus. It works by scanning urine for DNA that bladder cancer cells shed as they grow, checking for more than 450 mutations across 23 genes. The point is not to replace cystoscopy, the small camera inserted up the urethra that remains the definitive diagnosis and, as anyone who has had one will confirm, is no fun. It is to decide who needs that camera urgently. More than 300,000 cystoscopies happen in the UK each year, with long waits in some areas. Researchers estimate tens of thousands of patients a year could skip the procedure. A larger trial is next.