MCED blood test boosts cancer detection in symptomatic patients

IF 503.1 1区 医学 Q1 ONCOLOGY CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians Pub Date : 2023-11-04 DOI:10.3322/caac.21817
Mike Fillon
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Looking at people with symptoms is important because most people with cancer have symptoms before they present.”</p><p>Dr Middleton, who is also director of the cancer research UKOxford Centre, adds, “Often, the symptoms are vague and family physicians have to work out whom to refer for invasive tests. We were interested in seeing how [this blood test] might perform here, to see if it could help sort out who needs more tests for what symptoms.” The study appears in <i>Lancet Oncology</i> (doi:10.1016/S1470-2045(23)00277-2).</p><p>Each subject was referred for imaging, endoscopy, or other diagnostic tests as follow-ups for suspected gynecological, lung, lower gastrointestinal, or upper gastrointestinal cancer and other non-specific but suspicious symptoms. Each subject also provided a blood sample for DNA testing.</p><p>According to the researchers, the most frequently reported symptoms were unexplained weight loss (1318, 24.1%), erratic bowel habits (1199, 22.0%), postmenopausal bleeding (875, 16.0%), and rectal bleeding (858, 15.7%). Other symptoms included abdominal pain (794, 14.5%), other pains (580, 10.6%), dysphagia (482, 8.8%) and anemia (390, 7.1%)</p><p>The researchers found that the MCED test detected cancer signals in 323 subjects. Of these, 244 were diagnosed with cancer, a positive predictive value of 75.5% and a negative predictive value of 97.6%. The investigators found that the test’s sensitivity for cancer detection increased with more advanced cancer stages, and that there was some variation in accuracy depending on referral pathway, symptom cluster, and symptoms. In essence, they wrote that the results illustrated the importance of clinical context in interpreting the results and urged careful evaluation of each individual case.</p><p>With these caveats, researchers found that the most common cancer diagnoses of the 368 cancers detected were colorectal cancer (137, 37.2%), lung cancer (81, 22.0%), uterine cancer (30, 8.2%), oesophago-gastric cancer (22, 6.0%), and ovarian cancer (14, 3.8%).</p><p>The overall sensitivity and specificity of the MCED test for uncovering the 368 cancers was 66.3% and 98.4%, respectively. Sensitivity increased with patient age, and dramatically by cancer stage, from 24.2% for stage I to 95.3% for stage IV.</p><p>The researchers noted that there are no screening programs for most cancers; instead, most patients diagnosed with cancer first approach their primary care physician with vague symptoms that can take time to accurately diagnose. The hope is that a broad-based blood test like this one can expedite symptomatic cancer diagnosis.</p><p>“I think it is an important study,” says Wafik El-Deiry MD, PhD, associate dean for oncologic sciences at the Warren Alpert Medical School and director of the Legoretta Cancer Center at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. “Even though it is observational and not a prospective randomized study, I think it is an advance in the field because cancer diagnosis can take quite some time when you start with non-specific symptoms or use the standard approach for all the different tumor types. These types of blood tests can produce results fairly quickly with impressive sensitivity and with epigenetics alterations. This makes them cost-effective and potentially very useful clinically.”</p><p>Dr El-Deiry adds, “In terms of accuracy—with a positive predictive value of 75.5% and a negative predictive value of 97.6%—the numbers aren’t bad. But, like many other tests in medicine, obviously, this isn’t perfect.”</p><p>Although MCED tests are used to detect 50 different types of cancer, Dr El-Deiry notes that, according to the study, they are not as effective for detecting certain types of cancers, including prostate cancer. “I think it has to be taken with the caveat that there’s certainly some variability across tumor types,” he says. “However, if the cost of the test is less of an issue, I think it could be well worth it.”</p><p>Dr Middleton believes there are important takeaways from the study. “[This specific blood test] performed as expected,” he says, “and at about the same [level of] diagnostic accuracy in the symptomatic population as [in] the asymptomatic [population].” He says that its current algorithm is not accurate enough to say with confidence that people whose family doctor refers them for tests to rule out cancer do not need to do so if the test is negative. “If we retune the algorithm this might be possible, but [it] would need a new trial to confirm.”</p><p>Dr Middleton also says that physicians could use the blood test to identify patients with vague symptoms (weight loss, for example) who might need scans or scopes but whose family doctors do not currently send them for these tests. “We do need a follow-up study to prove this, however,” he says. 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She also notes that because of the varying cancer incidence and referral pathway in different countries, “the value of the multi-cancer early detection test will need to be assessed within the specific context in which it is being implemented.”</p>","PeriodicalId":137,"journal":{"name":"CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":503.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/caac.21817","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ONCOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
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Abstract

A large observational study of patients in England and Wales evaluated the effectiveness of the methylation-based multi-cancer early detection (MCED) blood test Galleri to identify over 50 types of cancer in symptomatic subjects. According to the University of Oxford researchers, who led the SYMPLIFY study, never before has an MCED test’s performance been evaluated in patients suspected of having some form of cancer.

“This is the first study to examine the performance of this blood test in a symptomatic population,” says study co-author Mark R. Middleton, PhD, professor of experimental cancer medicine, a consultant medical oncologist, and head of the Department of Oncology at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. “The test has been developed for screening asymptomatic people in the general population. Looking at people with symptoms is important because most people with cancer have symptoms before they present.”

Dr Middleton, who is also director of the cancer research UKOxford Centre, adds, “Often, the symptoms are vague and family physicians have to work out whom to refer for invasive tests. We were interested in seeing how [this blood test] might perform here, to see if it could help sort out who needs more tests for what symptoms.” The study appears in Lancet Oncology (doi:10.1016/S1470-2045(23)00277-2).

Each subject was referred for imaging, endoscopy, or other diagnostic tests as follow-ups for suspected gynecological, lung, lower gastrointestinal, or upper gastrointestinal cancer and other non-specific but suspicious symptoms. Each subject also provided a blood sample for DNA testing.

According to the researchers, the most frequently reported symptoms were unexplained weight loss (1318, 24.1%), erratic bowel habits (1199, 22.0%), postmenopausal bleeding (875, 16.0%), and rectal bleeding (858, 15.7%). Other symptoms included abdominal pain (794, 14.5%), other pains (580, 10.6%), dysphagia (482, 8.8%) and anemia (390, 7.1%)

The researchers found that the MCED test detected cancer signals in 323 subjects. Of these, 244 were diagnosed with cancer, a positive predictive value of 75.5% and a negative predictive value of 97.6%. The investigators found that the test’s sensitivity for cancer detection increased with more advanced cancer stages, and that there was some variation in accuracy depending on referral pathway, symptom cluster, and symptoms. In essence, they wrote that the results illustrated the importance of clinical context in interpreting the results and urged careful evaluation of each individual case.

With these caveats, researchers found that the most common cancer diagnoses of the 368 cancers detected were colorectal cancer (137, 37.2%), lung cancer (81, 22.0%), uterine cancer (30, 8.2%), oesophago-gastric cancer (22, 6.0%), and ovarian cancer (14, 3.8%).

The overall sensitivity and specificity of the MCED test for uncovering the 368 cancers was 66.3% and 98.4%, respectively. Sensitivity increased with patient age, and dramatically by cancer stage, from 24.2% for stage I to 95.3% for stage IV.

The researchers noted that there are no screening programs for most cancers; instead, most patients diagnosed with cancer first approach their primary care physician with vague symptoms that can take time to accurately diagnose. The hope is that a broad-based blood test like this one can expedite symptomatic cancer diagnosis.

“I think it is an important study,” says Wafik El-Deiry MD, PhD, associate dean for oncologic sciences at the Warren Alpert Medical School and director of the Legoretta Cancer Center at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. “Even though it is observational and not a prospective randomized study, I think it is an advance in the field because cancer diagnosis can take quite some time when you start with non-specific symptoms or use the standard approach for all the different tumor types. These types of blood tests can produce results fairly quickly with impressive sensitivity and with epigenetics alterations. This makes them cost-effective and potentially very useful clinically.”

Dr El-Deiry adds, “In terms of accuracy—with a positive predictive value of 75.5% and a negative predictive value of 97.6%—the numbers aren’t bad. But, like many other tests in medicine, obviously, this isn’t perfect.”

Although MCED tests are used to detect 50 different types of cancer, Dr El-Deiry notes that, according to the study, they are not as effective for detecting certain types of cancers, including prostate cancer. “I think it has to be taken with the caveat that there’s certainly some variability across tumor types,” he says. “However, if the cost of the test is less of an issue, I think it could be well worth it.”

Dr Middleton believes there are important takeaways from the study. “[This specific blood test] performed as expected,” he says, “and at about the same [level of] diagnostic accuracy in the symptomatic population as [in] the asymptomatic [population].” He says that its current algorithm is not accurate enough to say with confidence that people whose family doctor refers them for tests to rule out cancer do not need to do so if the test is negative. “If we retune the algorithm this might be possible, but [it] would need a new trial to confirm.”

Dr Middleton also says that physicians could use the blood test to identify patients with vague symptoms (weight loss, for example) who might need scans or scopes but whose family doctors do not currently send them for these tests. “We do need a follow-up study to prove this, however,” he says. He also believes that because the blood test was accurate approximately 85% of the time in identifying where the cancer was in the body, it could be used by primary care doctors before pursuing other diagnoses.

Jeanne Tie, MD, MBChB, an associate professor in the Department of Medical Oncology at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Victoria, Australia, and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia, by and large applauds the study in an accompanying editorial (doi:10.1016/S1470-2045(23)00288-7). She notes that there are still many issues that need to be resolved before there can be broad use of MCED testing in clinical settings.

“MCED tests need to be able to detect a low level of ctDNA [circulating tumor DNA] with high confidence and filter out single nucleotide polymorphisms and clonal haematopoiesis of indeterminate potential variants without previous knowledge of cancer-related genomic changes,” she says. She also notes that because of the varying cancer incidence and referral pathway in different countries, “the value of the multi-cancer early detection test will need to be assessed within the specific context in which it is being implemented.”

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MCED血液检测提高了有症状患者的癌症检测
“我认为必须注意的是,不同肿瘤类型之间肯定存在一些差异。然而,如果检测成本不是什么问题,我认为这是值得的。”——Wafik El Deiry医学博士,一项针对英格兰和威尔士患者的大型观察性研究评估了基于甲基化的多癌早期检测(MCED)血液测试Galleri在有症状的受试者中识别50多种癌症的有效性。据领导SYMPLIFY研究的牛津大学研究人员称,以前从未对疑似患有某种形式癌症的患者进行过MCED测试。研究合著者、癌症实验医学教授、肿瘤医学顾问、英国牛津大学肿瘤系主任马克·R·米德尔顿博士说:“这是第一项在有症状人群中检查这种血液测试表现的研究。”。“这项检测是为筛查普通人群中的无症状人群而开发的。观察有症状的人很重要,因为大多数癌症患者在出现症状之前就有症状。”米德尔顿博士同时也是癌症研究UKOxford Centre的主任,他补充道,“通常情况下,症状是模糊的,家庭医生必须确定谁应该接受侵入性检测。我们很想看看(这种血液检测)在这里会如何表现,看看它是否有助于找出谁需要更多的症状检测。”这项研究发表在《柳叶刀肿瘤学》上(doi:10.1016/S1470-2045(23)00277-2)。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
873.20
自引率
0.10%
发文量
51
审稿时长
1 months
期刊介绍: CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians" has been published by the American Cancer Society since 1950, making it one of the oldest peer-reviewed journals in oncology. It maintains the highest impact factor among all ISI-ranked journals. The journal effectively reaches a broad and diverse audience of health professionals, offering a unique platform to disseminate information on cancer prevention, early detection, various treatment modalities, palliative care, advocacy matters, quality-of-life topics, and more. As the premier journal of the American Cancer Society, it publishes mission-driven content that significantly influences patient care.
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