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In the future, a blood test may be able to replace a biopsy

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In the future, a blood test may be able to replace a biopsy

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Doctors often have to take a tissue sample to understand what is happening inside a tumor or another affected organ. Biomedical scientist Danilo Mladenović is working to find the same information from a blood sample. Research carried out at Tallinn University may therefore help doctors detect diseases earlier and monitor treatment effectiveness without having to take repeated tissue samples.

Understanding Mladenović's development work without formal training in the field requires a good imagination. One way to think about it is to imagine that every cell in the human body is a tiny house. All the houses are constantly sending each other tiny packages. Some packages contain proteins, while others contain fragments of genetic information that carry messages about their origin. Billions of these tiny packages circulate in the human bloodstream every day. The packages are so small that you could fit millions of them on the tip of a needle.

If one of the houses falls ill, the package it has sent may also be affected. By detecting these packages in the blood and reading the messages they contain, researchers and doctors can find out what is happening inside the body without having to examine the affected organ directly.

The problem is that blood vessels are extremely narrow. Blood contains millions of different particles and molecules. Finding these packages—or extracellular vesicles—is like trying to find an important letter in your mailbox while it is full of newspapers, ads and thousands of unread letters.


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