The at-home test that could catch cancer earlier
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are building a screening test that is able to detect more than 30 types of Stage 1 cancer from the comfort of a patient's own home. The test they envision is a multistep process. First, the patient swallows a bioengineered pill that contains tumor sensors. Those sensors are triggered by low oxygen, acidity and lactate in the body, which are trademark signs of cancer.
The sensors release signals that indicate the presence of a tumor and its specific tissue of origin, and are excreted into urine. Then the patient completes a urine test, in which a simple device analyzes whether there is a tumor and the organ in which it is located. The results will then be sent via smartphone to a medical professional for further analysis and possible treatment.
Mechanical Engineering Professor Rebecca Taylor in the College of Engineering is the principal investigator leading the project and explained how this project could save lives and save money. Burak Ozdoganlar, Ver Plank Professor, Mechanical Engineering, Associate Director of the Engineering Research Accelerator and Co-director of the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Technology Alliance, is co-leading the research project.
This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.
What are you hoping to tackle in 2026?
Taylor: The elevator pitch for this project is: It would be wonderful to be able to screen for a range of small tumor types and do it effectively, fairly easily at home every year. The challenge is that solid tumors at Stage 1 are super hard to detect. But if you can find them that early, they're far easier to treat. And so if we really want to make a dent in reducing the toll of cancer, this is a huge opportunity. What we're attempting to do is understand how to find it. That's very different from understanding the mechanisms of the disease, which is absolutely critical. But this project goes in a new direction.
For me, one of the biggest opportunities for CMU going forward, is realizing technologies that represent the future of what medical devices could be. For our project, we have synthetic biological components in a physical device that interacts with your cell phone, as well as nanotechnology that acts as sensing machinery in the body. That is really exciting, because CMU is leading the way with the development of those sorts of technologies related to delivery, communication, sensing and interaction with living systems.
This is a brand new approach to cancer detection. Where are you in the research process right now?
Taylor: The project started in October 2025. We're basically developing multiple different types of molecular sensors, and we're working on understanding how they'll work in a few different labs. For example, we're studying how to load them onto carriers in one lab, and we're studying how to get them out of the carriers in another. We've broken down the problem into all the different steps. We have a team where we have seven different institutions working together, and each brings depth of expertise in one or more extraordinarily relevant areas. We can't actually talk about it in detail, but it is an exciting collaboration.
What do you hope the impact of early cancer detection will be for potential patients?
Taylor: This would allow doctors to treat diseases when they're most treatable. I think this research would potentially change how we view a lot of cancer treatment and it would add to productive, healthy years of life for patients. Imagine, every year, getting that peace of mind when you find out that there is no new data for you—no Stage 1 tumors have been found. Or, if a tumor is found, it's small. It's treatable. That could change the course of a person's health for the rest of their life.
Ozdoganlar: If we can make early detection something people can do at home, the impact could reach millions of people because cancer affects so many families.
The potential for this treatment sounds incredible, but also like science fiction. How are you making sure users trust it?
Taylor: Trust is really important. As an engineer, the fundamental question that everybody grapples with is: Are you solving the right problem? We have to figure out how to solve this problem in the way that it will get used. We're asking: How can we design a device so that it's usable, reliable and incredibly low cost? There's a lot of fun that goes into figuring out how to efficiently build something that's high performance but low cost. It needs to communicate with your cell phone and then we need software that connects you with the medical professional. In addition to all the molecular components having to work, we also have to design the experience and the interface so that it also knows that the test was run properly, and that you can trust your results.
Trust could be established as simply as what you tell users about what you'll do with the information: transparency about what will be gathered, how it will be shared. It may come down to very small steps that demonstrate credibility and don't put people off.
Ozdoganlar: A test only helps if people use it. We want this to work for real patients in real settings, and to earn trust through consistent performance and clear communication.
How much will it cost?
Taylor: If it's too expensive for users, that's a nonstarter. We are working with UPMC Hillman Cancer Center to do surveys with the community to find out what would be useful to them and what they could afford.
The federal agency funding this research, said projects should work toward a $100 selling price. It'll be a big challenge to pull that off, but we think we know how to make it possible, too. These parameters make it necessary that every part of this platform be engineered to deliver on performance as well as user experience and cost. By considering those really hard constraints from the beginning, we'll be able to hit those requirements in terms of cost and other important factors revealed in community surveys.
Provided by Carnegie Mellon University
