Promising results showcase benefits of MCED lab tests and provide hope for continued advancements
In impressive new research, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine has developed a clinical laboratory blood test that detects the presence of cancer years before symptoms present, aiding physicians with early diagnosis and treatment.
The identification of cancer cells comes via bloodstream analysis showing genetic materials shed by tumors and showcases the promise of multicancer early detection screening (MCED) to spot all types of cancer in early stages.
“Three years earlier provides time for intervention. The tumors are likely to be much less advanced and more likely to be curable,” Yuxuan Wang, MD, PhD, lead researcher and assistant professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins, told SciTechDaily.
Kimmel Cancer Center, Ludwig Center, the Bloomberg School of Public Health also participated in the study with the support of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Senior study author Nickolas Papadopoulos, PhD, professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and senior author of the study, notes that an appropriate course of clinical care will be required following any positive result from the new cancer diagnostic blood test. (Photo copyright: Johns Hopkins.)
Johns Hopkins Study Details
To complete their research, the scientists studied plasma samples that came from the NIH study on Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC), which was created to examine cardiovascular disease risk factors in heart failure, strokes, and heart attacks, SciTechDaily reported.
The researchers analyzed the samples using “highly accurate and sensitive sequencing techniques to analyze blood samples from 26 participants in the ARIC study who were diagnosed with cancer within six months after sample collection, and 26 from similar participants who were not diagnosed with cancer, ” SciTechDaily noted.
At the time of sample gathering, eight of the study participants had received a positive score on the MCED test. Six of them provided additional blood samples dating back 3.1 to 3.5 years. Four of those samples showed mutations, SciTechDaily reported.
Value of MCED Screening
While the sample size in the Johns Hopkins study is small, results of the tests give patients and their physicians a head start on identifying appropriate treatments and demonstrate the strides already made with MCED screening.
MCED tests are relatively new, and while they continue to lack FDA-approval, their ability to discern various types of cancer and provide advanced detection with helpful results make them a promising approach to early cancer screening, the American Cancer Society (ACS) notes.
“For cancers of all stages, therapies are more effective with a lower disease burden,” the scientists wrote in Cancer Discovery.
MCED tests use blood, saliva, urine, or other body fluids to seek out cancer signs through RNA, DNA, or proteins from abnormal cells that may be cancerous. Current screening can assist with cervical, breast, colorectal, prostate, or lung cancer, the ACS added.
Spotting Cancer Earlier
The Johns Hopkins scientist believe detection beyond three years early is likely. “In four of these six participants, the same mutations detected by the multicancer early detection test could be identified, but at 8.6- to 79-fold lower mutant allele fractions. These results demonstrate that it is possible to detect [circulating tumor DNA] more than three years prior to clinical diagnosis and provide benchmark sensitivities required for this purpose,” the Cancer Discovery study notes.
“Detecting cancers years before their clinical diagnosis could help provide management with a more favorable outcome,” Nickolas Papadopoulos, PhD, professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and senior author of the study, told SciTechDaily.
“Of course, we need to determine the appropriate clinical follow-up after a positive test for such cancers,” he added.
This is another approach to the liquid biopsy that clinical laboratories and pathologists may use to detect cancer less invasively
Screening for cancer usually involves invasive, often painful, costly biopsies to provide samples for diagnostic clinical laboratory testing. But now, scientists at the University of Technology (UTS) in Sydney, Australia, have developed a novel approach to identifying tumorous cells in the bloodstream that uses imaging to cause cells with elevated lactase to fluoresce, according to a UTS news release.
The UTS researchers created a Static Droplet Microfluidic (SDM) device that detects circulating tumor cells (CTC) that have separated from the cancer source and entered the bloodstream. The isolation of CTCs is an intrinsic principle behind liquid biopsies, and microfluidic gadgets can improve the efficiency in which problematic cells are captured.
The University of Technology’s new SDM device could lead the way for very early detection of cancers and help medical professionals monitor and treat cancers.
“Managing cancer through the assessment of tumor cells in blood samples is far less invasive than taking tissue biopsies. It allows doctors to do repeat tests and monitor a patient’s response to treatment,” explained Majid E. Warkiani, PhD, Professor, School of Biomedical Engineering, UTS, and one of the authors of the study, in a news release. Clinical laboratories and pathologists may soon have a new liquid biopsy approach to detecting cancers. (Photo copyright: University of New South Wales.)
Precision Medicine a Goal of UTS Research
The University of Technology’s new SDM device differentiates tumor cells from normal cells using a unique metabolic signature of cancer that involves the waste product lactate.
“A single tumor cell can exist among billions of blood cells in just one milliliter of blood, making it very difficult to find,” explained Majid E. Warkiani, PhD, a professor in the School of Biomedical Engineering at UTS and one of the authors of the study, in the news release.
“The new [SDM] detection technology has 38,400 chambers capable of isolating and classifying the number of metabolically active tumor cells,” he added.
“In the 1920s, Otto Warburg discovered that cancer cells consume a lot of glucose and so produce more lactate. Our device monitors single cells for increased lactate using pH sensitive fluorescent dyes that detect acidification around cells,” Warkiani noted.
After the SDM device has detected the presence of questionable cells, those cells undergo further genetic testing and molecular analysis to determine the source of the cancer. Because circulating tumor cells are a precursor of metastasis, the device’s ability to identify CTCs in very small quantities can aid in the diagnosis and classification of the cancer and the establishment of personalized treatment plans, a key goal of precision medicine.
The new technology was also designed to be operated easily by medical personnel without the need for high-end equipment and tedious, lengthy training sessions. This feature should allow for easier integration into medical research, clinical laboratory diagnostics, and enable physicians to monitor cancer patients in a functional and inexpensive manner, according to the published study.
“Managing cancer through the assessment of tumor cells in blood samples is far less invasive than taking tissue biopsies. It allows doctors to do repeat tests and monitor a patient’s response to treatment,” stated Warkiani in the press release.
The team have filed for a provisional patent for the device and plan on releasing it commercially in the future.
Other Breakthroughs in MCED Testing
Scientists around the world have been working to develop a simple blood test for diagnosing cancer and creating optimal treatment protocols for a long time. There have been some notable breakthroughs in the advancement of multi-cancer early detection (MCED) tests, which Dark Daily has covered in prior ebriefings.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cancer ranks second in the leading causes of death in the US, just behind heart disease. There were 1,603,844 new cancer cases reported in 2020, and 602,347 people died of various cancers that year in the US.
According to the National Cancer Institute, the most common cancers diagnosed in the US annually include:
Cancer is a force in Australia as well. It’s estimated that 151,000 Australians were diagnosed with cancer in 2021, and that nearly one in two Australians will receive a diagnosis of the illness by the age of 85, according to Cancer Council South Australia.
The population of Australia in 2021 was 25.69 million, compared to the US in the same year at 331.9 million.
The development of the University of Technology’s static droplet microfluidic device is another approach in the use of liquid biopsies as a means to detect cancer less invasively.
More research and clinical studies are needed before the device can be ready for clinical use by anatomic pathology groups and medical laboratories, but its creation may lead to faster diagnosis of cancers, especially in the early stages, which could lead to improved patient outcomes.
