These limitations have held back the use of EV‑based liquid biopsies—especially for detecting multiple cancers from a single blood sample.

Researchers at the Center for Systems Biology at Mass General Brigham wanted to know whether blood samples could be processed automatically, at high throughput and without bias to accurately detect multiple cancer types.

They also asked whether the protein profiles, or patterns, that emerged from measuring many different proteins on EVs at once could distinguish cancer from non‑cancer samples and identify specific tumor types. Finally, the team tested whether all of these steps could be combined into a single, clinically practical “lab‑on‑a‑disc” device.