My first Magazine SFI Little Book - April Re-print edits included | Page 25

41 Bowel Cancer Screen Each year 1,000 Irish people die from bowel cancer and 2,500 are diagnosed with the disease making it the second most common type of cancer in Ireland. Unfortunately the screening test for bowel cancer, the ‘Faecal Occult Blood Test’, which tests for blood in the patients stool is not very sensitive, often missing early stages of the disease. A team from the Biomedical Diagnostics Institute at Dublin City University has been working with Irish biotech firm Randox to develop a €25 bowel cancer screen that detects antibodies produced in response to cancer onset and aims to do away with the outdated, expensive, and inaccurate FOBT test. www.bdi.ie