Chinese and foreign teams develop blood screening early screening cancer method: can be found 4 years earlier

recent years, circulating tumor DNA (circulating tumor DNA) in plasma has become a promising biomarker of cancer, known as a "liquid biopsy." ctDNA has proven to be of practical value in non-invasive detection of cancer, individualized treatment of advanced cancer, and monitoring during and after treatment. However, the current testing research focuses on the detection of patients who have been diagnosed with cancer, what is the potential for early detection? On the evening of July 21st, Beijing time, researchers from Fudan University, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Shandong University's Qilu Hospital, Sweden's Karolinska School of Medicine, andFar Gene (Shanghai) reported that a non-invasive blood test could be used as a potential tool to detect five common cancers four years before routine diagnosis.
the study, entitled "Non-invasive early detection of cancer four years before the production of a blood test", was written by
researcher at Fudan University's Taizhou Institute of Health Sciences, professor-at-home professor at karolinska School of Medicine in Sweden, associate professor Gao Yuan, co-founder and chairman ofFar Gene, Zhang , Professor, Department of Bioengineering, University of California, San Diego, co-founder ofFar Gene, Postdoctoral and Associate Research Fellow, Department of Bioengineering, University of California, San Diego, co-founder ofFar Gene and CTO Liu Wei, Executive Vice President of Fudan University and Professor of Life Sciences, Jin Li
.
common types mentioned in the paper are stomach, esophageal, colorectal, lung and liver cancers. The United States kills 261,530 people each year from these five types of cancer, and China kills 2.1 million people from these five cancers each year, and early detection can significantly reduce the number of deaths from these diseases.
that if cancer can be detected at an early stage, the survival rate of cancer patients will be greatly improved because the tumor can be surgically removed or treated with appropriate medications, the team said. Data show that the average five-year survival rate for early cancer is 91%, while the average five-year survival rate for late stage is down to 26%. However, only a few cancers currently have a limited number of screening tests, including colonoscopy, prostate-specific antigens, X-ray mammary photography and cervical cytology.
,and others, noted that while ctDNA has the potential for early diagnosis, there are still some obstacles. For example, the amount of tumor DNA in the plasma is limited, especially at an early stage, which may affect sensitivity. In addition, typical ctDNA mutation screening methods are error-prone, leading to reduced specificity, and the mutation nature of cancer means screening a large number of possible mutations for consistent biomarkers. An effective screening test must prove in longitudinal studies that asymptomatic cancer can be detected years before a routine diagnosis, the team said. In the paper, they showed that in a longitudinal study (TZL) conducted in Taizhou, Jiangsu Province, 123,115 healthy subjects provided plasma samples and kept them for long periods of time before monitoring cancer. The subjects were aged 25-90 years and plasma samples were collected between 2007 and 2014.
year to the end of 2017, 575 prediagnosed (pre-diagnosis) patients (initially asymptomatic) were diagnosed with one of these five common cancers within four years. The team further analyzed 191 of the 575 patients, including plasma samples from 223 cancer-diagnosed patients and 414 health samples. Studies have shown that for 5 common types of cancer diagnosed patients (Post-diagnosis), panSeer testing overall sensitivity was 88% (95% confidence interval: 80-93%), specificity 96% (95) %Confidence interval: 93-98%), PanSeer detection sensitivity was 95% (95% confidence interval: 89-98%)for asymptomatic subjects, and longitudinal studies are needed to confirm this result in the future.
the results suggest that a non-dumping test can detect five common cancers early four years before a routine diagnosis, according to the team.
other than that, although the PanSeer test showed a high sensitivity to cancer detection in plasma samples, the team observed that some genomic bits did not show consistent methylation changes between cancer tissue and cancer plasma samples. Although this may be due to internal differences in tissue and plasma methylation, these insanities may indicate unknown confuse factors.
, the team analyzed the PanSeer data further. They identified 277 genomic regions that showed consistent methylation in tissues and plasma, and when modeled using only these 277 genomic regions, sensitivity and specificity remained high. This suggests that PanSeer can detect early stage cancer even under stricter settings. The team stressed that panSeer testing is unlikely to be predictive, but rather that it is most likely to identify patients who have developed cancer but are shown to be asymptomatic under current conventional testing methods.
in the future, they said, they hope to conduct a large-scale, healthy individual prospective study to determine whether non-invasive cancer screening can reduce cancer mortality in a cost-effective way, in order to fully establish PanSeer's clinical application and fully validate the results of prediagnosis tests for cancer.
It is worth mentioning that Zhang , Gao Yuan and others in July 2014 in the United States set upFar Group, in January 2015 registered the establishment of Shanghai Yuan, committed to the development and promotion of high-volume sequencing-based tumor diagnostic technology and products, the official website shows that the current A round of financing and A-plus round of financing has been completed.
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