News

RNA emerges as diagnostic tool

Montevideo, May 11 (EFE).- With science in the headlines amid the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers around the world are looking at the possibility that a focus on extracellular RNA can offer a non-invasive alternative for early diagnosis of cancer and other serious illnesses.STATEMENTS BY THE MOLECULAR BIOLOGIST, JUAN PABLO TOSAR"This is not a job for a single person or even a job for a research group. Researchers in different groups are working on this long-term project, which is already many years old. That could permit making an earlier diagnosis of certain kinds of cancer and tumors that, in general, are detected very late. There is a great need to be able to count on a non-invasive or minimally invasive analysis that allows you to detect that type of illness at an early stage. That is what we call a liquid biopsy. It's an analysis of a sample extracted without having to go to the operating room, as it's not a strategy used in symptomatic people, but in healthy people with the objective of preventing an illness or detecting it early. It is a revolution at the diagnostic level."