According to a trial conducted by the researchers of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a new blood test has been found effective at detecting different types of cancer with more than 99 percent accuracy.
The researchers presented the findings of the trial at the conference of the European Society for Medical Oncology 2019 Congress.
They conducted the trial on nearly 3,600 blood samples. Some samples were collected from patients with cancer and some from people without cancer. When they analyzed the samples of cancer patients, the blood test found a cancer signal and identified the origin of the tissue where the cancer began.
The ability of the new blood test to detect the positive result was high among the patients who actually had cancer.
The new blood test, which is developed by GRAIL, Inc., looks for DNA that cancer cells enter the blood when they die. The next-generation sequence technology focuses on DNA modifications, aka methyl groups, which are attached to DNA through a process called ‘methylation.’ Abnormal methylation, which is found in cancer cells, turns out to be an important tool to detect cancer.
Lead study author Dr. Geoffrey Oxnard of Dana-Farber said, “Our previous work indicated that methylation-based assays outperform traditional DNA-sequencing approaches to detecting multiple forms of cancer in blood samples. The results of the new study demonstrate that such assays are a feasible way of screening people for cancer.”
The overall accuracy of the blood test in detecting different types of cancer was 99.4%, while 0.6% were misdiagnosed.
Dr. Oxnard explained, “Detecting even a modest percent of common cancers early could translate into many patients who may be able to receive more effective treatment if the test were in wide use.” Cancer tumors are smaller and do not spread when a diagnosis is made early. However, it becomes difficult to treat cancer once it has metastasized. Therefore, early detection is the key.
