Health Topics – Johns Hopkins Medicine Podcasts
Jul 10, 2026 · 1 min · 3 segments
More and more blood tests to screen for cancer are coming on the market, with a new one looking at proteins in the blood helping identify who is at risk to develop lung cancer. Kimmel Cancer Center…
Elizabeth Tracy
Kimmel Cancer Center Director William Nelson at Johns Hopkins says if such a test could motivate people to utilize low-dose CT to image their lungs, that would be a good outcome, and he suspects more of this type of test is coming.
I do think there are going to be risk tests, and I think that may well be the game in lung cancer.
There are some blood-based DNA tests that are going to be coming down the pike, some of them being looked at by the FDA right now, that have a high negative predictive value in the group that would otherwise be recommended for low-dose CT scan imaging.
And you can imagine a test like that, if positive, would be highly motivating for someone to go get screened.
Nelson says if such tests also help people avoid more extensive and expensive screening tests, that's also good for our health care system.
Kimmel Cancer Center Director William Nelson at Johns Hopkins says if such a test could motivate people to utilize low-dose CT to image their lungs, that would be a good outcome, and he suspects more of this type of test is coming.
I do think there are going to be risk tests, and I think that may well be the game in lung cancer.
There are some blood-based DNA tests that are going to be coming down the pike, some of them being looked at by the FDA right now, that have a high negative predictive value in the group that would otherwise be recommended for low-dose CT scan imaging.
And you can imagine a test like that, if positive, would be highly motivating for someone to go get screened.
Nelson says if such tests also help people avoid more extensive and expensive screening tests, that's also good for our health care system.
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