Conventional cancer biopsy requires a doctor to take a sample of the patient's tumor. But researchers have been testing a new and advanced measure.

The new measure is a blood test, which is proving to be a promising way to find out traces of cancer DNA in blood. It is considered that the blood test will help oncologists to quickly figure out whether or not a treatment is working.

Other benefits include whether or not there is a need to continue monitor the case. The treatments not showing any response could be ended and allowing doctors to try other options.

"This could change forever the way we follow up not only response to treatments but also the emergence of resistance, and down the line could even be used for really early diagnosis", affirmed Dr. José Baselga, chief medical officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

The researchers affirmed that more research is needed on those measures. Small studies have been carried out cancers, including long, colon, and blood and their results have been encouraging. In the study published in The Lancet Oncology had 126 patients having the most common form of lymphoma.

The researchers said that the blood test was able to find out that recurrences can take place more than three months before they were noticeable on CT scans. The liquid biopsies were able to find out the patient unlikely to respond to therapy.

Dr. David Hyman, the oncologist at Sloan Kettering, was of the view that when a person is being treated and there can be times that there could be some residual lesion on a scan. When biopsy is done, then what is found is just a scar tissue and a visible cancer.

But blood tests allow constant monitoring of tumors and it will be known when they spread and mutate or develop resistance towards treatment.