A spectroscopic liquid biopsy for the earlier detection of multiple cancer types

BACKGROUND: A rapid, low-cost blood test that can be applied to reliably detect multiple different cancer types would be transformational. METHODS: In a large-scale discovery study (n = 2092 patients), the Dxcover® Cancer Liquid Biopsy was applied to examine eight cancer types using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and machine-learning algorithms to detect cancer. RESULTS: Area under the ROC curve (AUC) values versus symptomatic non-cancer controls were: brain (0.90), breast (0.76), colorectal (0.91), kidney (0.91), lung (0.91), ovarian (0.86), pancreatic (0.84) and prostate (0.86). When all eight cancer types were pooled to classify ‘any cancer’ against non-cancer patients, the cancer versus asymptomatic non-cancer model detected 64% of Stage I cancers at 99% specificity (overall sensitivity 57%); when tuned for higher sensitivity, it identified 99% of Stage I cancers (specificity 59%). CONCLUSIONS: This spectroscopic blood test can effectively detect early-stage disease and can be tuned to prioritise sensitivity or specificity, offering a low-cost strategy that could facilitate earlier diagnosis when treatment can be more effective or less toxic.

James M. Cameron, Alexandra Sala, Georgios Antoniou, Paul M. Brennan, Holly J. Butler, Justin J. A. Conn, Siobhan Connell, Tom Curran, Mark G. Hegarty, Rose G. McHardy, Daniel Orringer, David S. Palmer, Benjamin R. Smith, Matthew J. Baker