Nature Sub-Journal: A liquid biopsy can accurately detect early renal cancer.

This article is for the original translational medicine network, please indicate the source: Lauren introduction: kidney cancer is a common malignant tumor in Department of Urology, the incidence rate is 2%~3% of adult cancer. Although there are many symptoms of renal cancer, the diagnosis of renal cell carcinoma is not easy.a recent study published in the journal Nature Medicine showed that liquid biopsy can accurately detect early renal cell carcinoma.it is estimated that about 35% of renal cell carcinoma can only be diagnosed when it spreads beyond the kidney, which makes treatment more difficult.small, early renal tumors usually have no symptoms, and in many cases, they are found by accident during other examinations.scientists at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute say a new liquid biopsy method can detect renal cancer with high accuracy, including small, curable, local renal tumors that cannot be detected by conventional detection methods.the study, published in the June 22 issue of the journal Nature Medicine, points out that if validated and widely used in larger scale trials, this noninvasive test can detect more undifferentiated early renal cell carcinoma, thereby reducing the mortality of the disease.Toni choueiri, M.D., director of the Dana Faber Center for reproductive and urological oncology and co senior author of the study, said, "we hope to expand this study to a larger scale, detect cancer earlier, and take action earlier."the technical name of this method is cfmedip SEQ, which is cell-free methylated DNA immunoprecipitation and high-throughput sequencing.other liquid biopsy methods are to search for mutations in tumor exfoliated DNA to reveal the type and location of cancer. Cfmedip SEQ can detect abnormal DNA methylation, that is, adding chemical tags to DNA, which will not change their genetic code, but will affect their function.joyley said: "however, for the general population, they usually do not use imaging or other screening methods to detect early renal cancer.therefore, the test methods described in the new study may initially be used to screen people with a family history of renal cancer, or with a history of renal cancer.we need to be clear before we can make it mainstream completely."Dr. Matthew Freedman, a medical oncologist at Dana Farber, said:" noninvasive liquid biopsy is a way to find cancer-related DNA in blood or other body fluids. As a means of early detection of some tumors, it is rapidly developing to clinical application.however, renal cell carcinoma is one of the most difficult tumors to detect because it does not shed as much DNA as other tumors.this is where this test performs very well, because it can identify abnormal patterns in a small amount of tumor exfoliated DNA.this is a proof of principle in an early stage."when blood samples were used to distinguish renal cancer patients from patients without renal cancer, the accuracy of the detection was close to 100%.this method is less accurate in detecting urine samples, but the researchers believe that performance can be improved.if the test is validated in larger scale trials and is widely used in clinical practice, the invasiveness of urine sample will be even smaller than that of blood sampling.the authors of the study also wrote: "the method was used to detect 99 patients with early and advanced renal cell carcinoma, 15 patients with stage IV urothelial bladder cancer, and 28 healthy non cancer controls.in the analysis of serum with this test, the study reported a "near perfect" classification of patients with renal cell carcinoma at all stages.although urine based classification is not as accurate, we believe that performance can be improved through technical and computational optimization."reference: [1] [2] recommended reading: fight against epidemic situation, translational medicine network content team series report: [Nature sub journal] the largest genetic research so far! Unveil new genetic variation related to type 2 diabetes! [JAMA sub] scientists found a new gene for the first time, which is expected to cure Alzheimer's disease [science sub journal] Blockbuster: the infection rate of covid-19 in the United States may be 80 times higher than that previously reported! Click to read the original