How Are Prenatal Blood Tests Detecting Cancer?

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

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Summary

Noninvasive prenatal blood testing, or NIPT, is a routine screening that is offered during pregnancy and looks for placental DNA to diagnose chromosomal disorders in a fetus. But in some cases, these tests can also find cancer in the pregnant person. How do the tests work, and why are they uncovering cancer? Genetic counselor and writer Laura Herscher speaks with host Rachel Feltman about IDENTIFY (Incidental Detection of Maternal Neoplasia through Non-invasive Cell-Free DNA Analysis), a broader study that seeks to understand why usual results from NIPT can correlate with a cancer diagnosis in a pregnant patient. Plus, we discuss why treating pregnant patients for cancer can be complicated for obstetricians and oncologists. Recommended reading: A Prenatal Test of the Fetus Turns Up Cancers in Pregnant Mothers https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-prenatal-test-of-the-fetus-turns-up-cancers-in-pregnant-mothers/ E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:52.7	For more than a decade, non-invasive prenatal blood testing, or NIPT, has been a fairly routine aspect of pregnancy care.
1:00.0	This testing searches a pregnant person's blood for fragments of DNA that have been shed by the placenta.
1:06.0	NIPT is designed to spot chromosomal disorders in the fetus, but in rare cases the blood test can detect
1:12.6	something else. Cancer in the parent. My guest today is Laura Hersher, a genetic counselor and
1:19.2	director of student research at the Sarah Lawrence College Joan H. Mark's graduate program in human
1:24.5	genetics. She recently wrote a piece for Scientific American about the
1:28.5	researchers working to understand how NIPT finds cancer in some pregnant people. She's here to tell us
1:34.7	more about the incidental detection of maternal neoplasia through non-invasive cell-free DNA
1:39.4	analysis study, or Identify for short. Laura, thank you so much for coming on to chat today.
1:44.8	So you recently wrote about something called the Identify study.
1:47.9	How did you get interested in the story?
1:50.2	Well, the first time I heard about Identify was when the principal investigator,
	...

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