At first glance, it is an innocuous machine, it looks like a 3D printer. And yet, it could change our lives. This large box makes it possible to carry out the Iset * tests , which by a simple blood test diagnose cancer early.

"It's revolutionary," says Olivier Roy, pharmacist biologist whose laboratory in Paris is the only one, for now, to offer these tests. "When we can meet the demand of all, and everywhere, it will increase the life expectancy of humanity. " Not less.

Patrizia Paterlini-Bréchot, a fierce fighter

At the origin of this discovery, Patrizia Paterlini-Bréchot, professor of cellular biology and oncology at the Necker-Enfants malades medical school (University Paris-Descartes).

A warm and humble woman who is whispered that she could be on the ranks of the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Which does not disturb her more than that.

"My immense chance in this life would be, once the test is made available on a large scale, to see a drop in cancer mortality. "

Child, already, Patrizia had an obsession that she can not explain: to heal her little comrades.

I was always shocked by the pain, I felt it on my skin. I was in rebellion against death.

She logically studies medicine in her home town, Modena, Italy, and specializes in oncology . Certainly not by chance. "It's true that it's a scary disease. It is felt that a person caught by cancer is stronger than her. A keen feeling against which you have to fight. But the reality is brutal: helpless in the face of the death of some of her cancer patients, she turns to high-level clinical research.

It was important to understand how cancer is formed to better combat it.

An 80% female research laboratory

In 1988, she joined in Paris, the laboratory of Professor Christian Bréchot, now director of the Pasteur Institute, and falls in love. " It was not planned. As Ingrid Bergman fell in love with Roberto Rossellini when he saw his films, I was reading Christian's scientific articles. Since they got married and had two sons. For years, at the head of her laboratory, which has 80% of researchers, she works on what are called circulating tumor cells.

Our hope was to detect the tumor invasion at the very beginning.

"Thanks to animal studies, it was known that these cells circulate in the blood years before metastases appear. But patients die because of metastases, not the primary tumor. As for the AIDS virus, these cells mutate, and by mutating, they are more and more resistant because they are given time. "

And the researcher to make the analogy with the conquest of space: for a circulating tumor cell that comes from the blood, to install a colony in a bone or the liver, it is like, for the humans, to colonize another planet, it takes time. "Before these cells proliferate and give metastases, it can happen years. And all this time, we leave him to cancer. I saw this huge mess. Research is common sense and determination. And hard to get funding. "In charge of my laboratory, I knocked on every door to find money. "

Patients already saved thanks to the ISET test

It took years to develop, in 2005, this ultrasensitive Iset machine since it manages to detect a tumor cell in ten milliliters of blood among five billion red blood cells and one hundred million white blood cells.

In the process, she founded her company, Rarecelles Diagnostics, but the patents belong to public research institutes (University Paris-Descartes, Inserm and AP-HP).

"We made the Iset machine available to other teams. This has already generated forty-three scientific publications. We wanted to allow time for independent science, not industry-driven, to develop its results. "

For example, the team of Professor Paul Hofman of the University Hospital of Nice followed for six years a cohort of patients at risk - heavy smokers with pulmonary bronchopathy. Through the test, the researchers detected tumor cells in the blood of five of them long before lung cancer was visible by radiology. These patients were operated and cured. A proof of the effectiveness of the test.

A cure for cancer that has a cost

"Great hope, technical prowess," says Marisol Touraine.

The Minister of Health sees "the promise of considerable upheaval in the management of cancer because it is particularly easy to use, and therefore easy to generalize".

Today, it is finally marketed. The test, billed € 486, is currently not reimbursed by the Social Security **.

"I would like tomorrow to be a routine test during a blood test. And be reimbursed. These are huge savings in the short term: if your first test is negative, the cancer is very long to develop, if the next is positive, you will be supported very early. "

But before his dream comes true, it will take years to juggle international regulations, inform doctors and train pathologists who analyze the tests.

Patrizia Paterlini-Bréchot is now looking for funding to refine her invention, "today, if you detect circulating tumor cells, you will have to undergo targeted medical imaging examinations to detect the tumor. According to your predispositions and your antecedents, one will begin for example by the breast for a woman and the prostate for a man until the scanner of the whole body if one does not find. But tomorrow, we should be able to say which organ they come from and thus save time. "

Time, the number one enemy of our researcher. Every second lost is patients who die.

* "Isolation by size of tumor cells": size isolation of tumor cells.
** www.isetbyrarecells.com