{"id":530989,"date":"2026-07-08T09:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T09:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/530989\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T09:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T09:44:09","slug":"brush-biopsy-test-detects-oral-squamous-cell-carcinoma-within-1-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/530989\/","title":{"rendered":"Brush biopsy test detects oral squamous cell carcinoma within 1 hour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Original story from Queen Mary University of London<\/a><\/p>\n

Researchers have validated a rapid, non-invasive brush biopsy test for oral cancer.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0paper published in the Nature journal\u00a0Biomarker Research<\/a> by a cross-University team led by Queen Mary University of London researchers, validates the use of a non-invasive brush biopsy test that can detect oral cancer within 1 hour.\u00a0This test could revolutionize oral cancer detection and prevent over 90% of unnecessary harmful scalpel biopsy procedures.<\/p>\n

These can be very painful, lead to infection and in some areas in the mouth such as the gum, it\u2019s hard to carry them out and may damage the underlying tooth\/bone structure.<\/p>\n

Oral cancer is a growing global killer.\u00a0According to Global Burden of Disease data, lip and oral cancer is among the world\u2019s most rapidly increasing causes of early death.\u00a0Over ten thousand people in the UK were diagnosed with oral cancer last year, according to the charity Mouth Cancer, and 3637 people lost their lives.\u00a0Worldwide, it affects 650,000 a year.<\/p>\n

Risk factors include tobacco use\/ smoking, alcohol, infection with the HPV virus and sun damage.\u00a0Unfortunately, more than half (53%) of all mouth cancers are diagnosed in stage IV, where the cancer is at its most advanced.\u00a0The study is the largest of its kind involving over 1000 samples from 545 patients.<\/p>\n

Early diagnosis: the problem with scalpel biopsies<\/p>\n

Early diagnosis of oral cancer (oral squamous cell carcinoma OSCC) is critical, yet most oral potentially malignant disorders (OPMDs) are benign, and patients frequently undergo unnecessary invasive scalpel biopsies, creating diagnostic delays and patient harm.<\/p>\n

A scalpel oral biopsy can be extremely painful \u2013 especially the tongue (the most common cancer site) \u2013 essentially because part of your tongue is cut off, which discourages both patients and clinicians from doing this repeatedly and in a timely fashion.<\/p>\n

A non invasive tool is urgently needed for long term surveillance and timely OSCC detection<\/p>\n

This study aimed to find out if a successful microbiopsy-based multigene assay (qMIDS-V2) could be adapted into a rapid, non-invasive brush biopsy test (qMIDS-V3) for accurate OSCC detection.<\/p>\n

It found that this new test works, potentially sparing over 90% of low-risk OPMD patients from unnecessary invasive tissue biopsies.<\/p>\n

The lead researcher Muy-Teck Teh, Professor of Molecular Oral Oncology at Queen Mary said:<\/p>\n

\u201cOral cancer survival is directly linked to how early it is found, yet our current diagnostic pathway is blunt \u2014 most patients with a suspicious lesion end up having an invasive biopsy even when the overwhelming likelihood is that it is benign. This test changes that. It gives clinicians a rapid, accurate, and non-invasive way to triage patients, and crucially, it can be repeated. That means we can now monitor patients with persistent pre-malignant lesions regularly and systematically \u2014 and pick up cancers much earlier than we would have been able to before.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the UK, a 10 year audit reported a 450% rise in two week wait referrals alongside a 50% drop in cancer detection rate.<\/p>\n

Subsequent audits showed that 92.5\u201399.5% of referred patients were cancer free, with most (96-98%) remaining cancer free at 5 year follow up.<\/p>\n

These findings highlight substantial over referral and inefficiency in current pathways.<\/p>\n

Implementing a rapid, non invasive triage test such as qMIDS-V3 could reduce unnecessary referrals for >90% of cancer free patients and lessen the clinical and financial burden of managing OPMDs and OSCC.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, qMIDS-V3 supports repeat brush biopsy, a critical capability for long-term surveillance, facilitating the detection of malignant transformation in OPMD patients while avoiding the need for multiple scalpel biopsies.<\/p>\n

Is there anything surprising about the results?<\/p>\n

This latest study builds on a substantial body of prior clinical validation.<\/p>\n

The second-generation test, qMIDS-V2, \u00a0was developed as a microbiopsy-based assay \u2014 a minimally invasive technique requiring only 1mm of tissue sample \u2014 and validated across more than 530 samples from three countries: the UK, India and China.<\/p>\n

That cross-continental validation established the robustness of the underlying multigene signature across diverse patient populations and clinical settings.<\/p>\n

What makes the findings of this new study so striking is that qMIDS-V3 \u2014 which requires only a non-invasive brush swab of the mouth, with no tissue removal whatsoever \u2014 achieves test performance that is highly comparable to its microbiopsy predecessor.<\/p>\n

Muy-Teck Teh, Professor of Molecular Oral Oncology at Queen Mary added:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were genuinely astonished by the fact that the brush swab test performance is comparable to a microbiopsy. It suggests that the biological signal captured by these four genes is sufficiently strong and consistent that it can be detected even from the superficial exfoliated cells collected by a brush biopsy. The clinical implications are significant: patients no longer need even a minimally invasive procedure to benefit from molecularly guided triage.\u201d<\/p>\n

A new tool for monitoring high-risk patients<\/p>\n

Beyond initial diagnosis, the test offers a further clinical benefit that has not previously been available at scale: because it is non-invasive and repeatable, it can be used to monitor patients with persistent OPMDs over time \u2014 conditions known to carry a risk of malignant transformation that is difficult to predict clinically.<\/p>\n

Serial testing could significantly improve the chances of detecting early-stage cancers in this high-risk group, at a point when treatment is most likely to be successful and survival outcomes are best.<\/p>\n

The team included researchers from Queen Mary University of London\u2019s Centre for Oral Immunobiology & Regenerative Medicine, King George\u2019s Medical University in India, Modern Dental College & Research Centre in India, and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.<\/p>\n

Queen Mary is actively looking for a commercial partner to help develop the test for clinical use.<\/p>\n

With the right partner, the inexpensive test could be in use within 2 years.<\/p>\n

This article has been republished from the\u00a0following\u00a0materials<\/a>.\u00a0Material may have been edited for length and house style. For further information, please contact the cited source. Our press release publishing policy can be accessed\u00a0here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Original story from Queen Mary University of London Researchers have validated a rapid, non-invasive brush biopsy test for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[163,85,46,77072,242333],"class_list":["post-530989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-oral-cancer","tag-oral-squamous-cell-carcinoma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}