CANCER DIAGNOSIS FROM A BLOOD DRAW? LIQUID BIOPSIES ARE STILL A DREAM

NICK PAPADOPOULOS TRACKS down tumors for a living. Not with X-rays or CT scans, but with DNA. The oncologist and director of translational genetics at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center has spent decades uncovering the unique sets of mutations that define cancers—the kind of genetic signals that not only drive tumor formation and metastasis, but distinguish one cancer from another. And now, he’s working to develop a test that could sniff out those signals before a patient starts to get sick.