New York (PTI): Spitting into a cup or licking a diagnostic test strip could soon be an alternative to having your blood drawn at the laboratory.

Researchers in the United States have developed a new method to separate and analyse all proteins found in human saliva, which they claim could be used to screen for oral cancer and other disorders in the cavity.

According to the researchers, human saliva contains an abundance of proteins and the newly developed technique, called three-step peptide fractionation, will facilitate in looking at all these proteins.

"The mortality rate for oral cancer has hardly declined over the past 30 years. This technique, providing the first description of using whole cells to identify the vast array of human and bacterial proteins in saliva, may help identify new markers for oral cancer progression," lead researcher Timothy Griffin said.

The research team has already analysed saliva samples from four oral cancer patients and identified over 1,000 human proteins, including many known cancer associated proteins, the 'ScienceDaily' reported on Monday.

In addition, the researchers have separated out proteins from over 30 different bacteria, many of which have not been previously found in saliva, and several of which may also have possible cancer links.

The results of the study have been published in the 'Molecular And Cellular Proteomics' journal.