CLEVELAND — After announcing it was partaking in a clinical trial for a new blood test that could detect more than 50 types of cancer before patients exhibit clinical signs or symptoms—catching cancer in its earliest stages—the Cleveland Clinic announced it plans to enroll Cleveland-area patients in the new blood test.
The results of the test have been published in the Annals of Oncology, showing that in cases where the test detected cancer it was able to pinpoint where it was located in the body with 93% accuracy.
The test identifies DNA that cancerous tumors shed into the blood, which contributes to what is called cell-free DNA (cfDNA). The blood test then analyzes chemical changes to the DNA. Abnormal changes can contribute to tumor growth, so the signals the test picks up in cfDNA detect and localize where the cancer is in the body.
The new test has a 0.7% false-positive rate, which would mean less than 1% of patients would be wrongly diagnosed with cancer from the test, the Clinic said.
Now joining the PATHFINDER study, the Cleveland Clinic will set out on the first trial to study the implementation of the test into clinical practice.
To do that, the study plans to enroll around 6,200 total participants, and the Cleveland Clinic plans to enroll patients from the area.
The study is open to men and women 50 and older who receive care at the Cleveland Clinic and meet the following criteria:
- Healthy individuals at average risk for cancer.
- Individuals with an increased risk of cancer, meaning they:
- Have smoked at least 100 cigarettes in their lifetime.
- Have a known genetic syndrome (BRCA, HNPCC, Lynch, etc.) that increases cancer risk.
- Have been treated for an invasive cancer at least three years ago and are currently cancer-free.
“We haven’t had a multi-cancer detection test like this before. We are trying to determine if using this test will allow us to identify cancers in asymptomatic people at average or elevated risk of cancer at an earlier stage than is currently possible,” said Eric Klein, M.D., chairman of Cleveland Clinic’s Glickman Urological & Kidney Institute and the principal investigator of Cleveland Clinic’s portion of the PATHFINDER Study. “Even if this test only detects a fraction of people who have early-stage cancer, it’s the first time that we will be able to detect many cancers that are currently lethal when we should be able to cure them.”
To learn more about participating in the study, click here.
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