“Smart” blood test detects liver cancer

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More than 800,000 people are diagnosed with liver cancer worldwide each year, and liver cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide

Scientists in the US developed a new blood test, which uses artificial intelligence to detect more than 80% of liver cancers. The DELFI test was originally used in 2021 to successfully diagnose lung cancer.

The researchers, led by oncology professor Victor Velculescu of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Kimmel Cancer Center in Baltimore, who made the relevant publication in the cancer journal Cancer Discovery, as well as the relevant announcement at a conference of the American Association for Cancer Research, tested the test on blood plasma samples from 724 people from the US, Europe and Hong Kong, with the aim of detecting hepatocellular carcinoma, a common form of liver cancer.

More than 800,000 people are diagnosed with liver cancer worldwide each year and liver cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide. An estimated 400 million people worldwide are at increased risk for this cancer due to cirrhosis of the liver, due to chronic liver diseases such as viral hepatitis or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

“Improved early detection of liver cancer could save lives, but currently available screening tests are underutilized and also miss many cancers,” said Romanian-born Dr. Velculescu.

The test measures the DNA of dead cancer cells circulating in the blood and the detection is done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine learning) algorithms that increase its accuracy. The researchers found that in people with an average level of risk, the test detects liver cancers in the earliest stages with a sensitivity of 88% (the rate of accurate cancer detection) and a specificity of 98% (that is, it almost never shows a false positive result). In people at high risk for hepatocellular carcinoma, the test has a sensitivity of 85% and a specificity of 80%, respectively.

Today less than 20% of the high-risk population gets tested for liver cancer. Researchers hope the new blood test can double the number of liver cancer diagnoses compared to the existing blood test, while also increasing early detection.

Evaluation of the test in clinical studies with a larger number of people will follow. Velculescu has founded the company Delfi Diagnostics, in which the Johns Hopkins University participates as a shareholder, while the Greek-born researcher Dimitrios Mathios participated in the development of the new test.

See the scientific publication

RES-EMP

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