A team of researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center has developed a unique blood test that detects eight common types of cancer and even helps pinpoint the location of the cancer.
The test, called CancerSEEK, is a unique, non-invasive, multi-analytical test that simultaneously evaluates the levels of eight cancer proteins and the presence of cancer gene mutations from DNA circulating in the blood. The test is aimed at detecting eight types of cancer, the most common and with the highest death rate. These are: liver , pancreas, stomach, esophagus, ovary, breast, colorectal and lung.
The test would find cancers before they cause symptoms and when they can still be cured only with surgery.
“Using a combination of selected biomarkers for early detection has the potential to change the way we detect cancer, and is based on the same logic for using combinations of drugs to treat cancer, ” says Nickolas Papadopoulos, leader of the work published in the journal Science.
The researchers initially explored several hundred genes and 40 protein markers, narrowing the number down to 16-gene and eight-protein segments. They note that this molecular test was aimed solely at cancer screening.
In this study, the test had a sensitivity greater than 99% for cancer. “The very high sensitivity was essential because false positive results can subject patients to unnecessary invasive follow-up tests and procedures to confirm the presence of cancer,” says study co-author Kenneth Kinzler.
The test, a liquid biopsy, was evaluated in 1,005 patients with non-metastatic stages I to III cancers of the ovary, liver, stomach, pancreas, esophagus, colon, lung, or breast. The mean overall sensitivity, or ability to find cancer, was 70% and ranged from a high of 98% for ovarian cancer to a low of 33% for breast cancer. For the five cancers that are not screened (ovarian, liver, stomach, pancreatic, and esophageal cancer), the sensitivity ranged from 69% to 98%.
“A novelty of our classification method is that it combines the probability of observing several DNA mutations together with the levels of various proteins to give the final result. Another new aspect of our approach is thatuse machine learningto allow the test to accurately determine the location of a tumor in a small number of anatomical sites in 83% of patients “, clarifies Cristian Tomasetti, who developed the algorithm.
Although the current test does not detect all cancers, it identifies many cancers that would otherwise go undetected.
“This trial represents the next step in shifting the focus of cancer research from late-stage disease to early disease, which I believe will be instrumental in reducing long-term cancer deaths,” explains study co-author Bert Vogelstein. .
CancerSEEK is non-invasive and can be administered by primary care professionals at the time of other routine blood tests. “Early detection provides many ways to improve patient outcomes. Optimally,cancers would be found quickly enough to be cured by surgery, but even cancers that are not curable only by surgery would respond better to systemic therapies when the disease is less advanced, “says Anne Marie Lennon, co-author of the work.
Researchers believe that theCancerSEEKit will cost less than $ 500.
Referencia: J.D. Cohen el al., “Detection and localization of surgically resectable cancers with a multi-analyte blood test,” Science (2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aar3247
