Who do doctors recommend get tested for colon cancer?
Dr. Liebler: I believe the guidelines for colonoscopies are that unless there’s any unusual risk factors like a fairly strong family history of colon cancer, a colonoscopy is recommended beginning at age 50 and then every 10 years thereafter, typically. What other methods of detection are you studying? Dr. Liebler: We think that colorectal cancer, like probably virtually all cancers, would release small amounts of cancer-related proteins into the blood, and that we could apply new technologies for very sensitive detection of these proteins to develop tests for detecting early-stage cancers. We already know that, for example, PSA can be measured in people with prostate cancer, and it’s a good marker for advancing stages of prostate cancer. But for most cancers, we don’t know what to look for in the blood. So the technology does exist to measure proteins in the blood with high-sensitivity. In principle, we have the technology to measure markers for cancers and develop lab tests for cance
