By Gia Miller
Design by Eliyahu Greenwald
Researchers from UCLA recently announced they created a simple blood test that can detect several types of cancer, multiple liver diseases and signs of organ damage. The test, which could cost as little as $20 according to UCLA Health, showed success in an early round of studies.
Key information
Sample size: Researchers tested 1,061 plasma samples.
- 460 samples came from patients with already diagnosed liver, lung, ovarian or stomach cancers.
- 601 samples came from a combination of participants with no current cancer diagnosis, in the following categories:
– 157 people have chronic liver disease and a high risk of liver cancer
-43 people have benign lung nodules and a high risk of lung cancer
– 401 people have no known cancer
Background
Detecting DNA shed by cancer cells into the bloodstream is not new, but about 85 percent of cell-free DNA in healthy people’s blood comes from normal blood cells. This large amount of background DNA can make genome-wide methylation tests complicated and expensive. In this study, the researchers’ new method reduces much of this low-methylation background, making it easier to detect DNA from other tissues—including fragments with methylation patterns that may signal cancer.
Zauderer says prior to this new technology, detecting cancer cells was like finding a needle in a haystack; now she compares it to finding a needle in one bale of hay.
What did the research establish?
The experts agreed that this new filtering technology shows promise. It demonstrated a very low rate of false positives and detected signals for liver, lung, ovarian, and stomach cancer. It also detected non-cancer conditions like hepatitis and cirrhosis (late-stage liver scarring). It was particularly effective at detecting liver cancer and liver diseases and could identify the organ of origin and differentiate types of liver disease without requiring an invasive biopsy.
However, at this time, the technology cannot detect all cancers. It detected 63 percent of cancers across all stages and about 55 percent of early-stage cancers.
What did it not establish?
The experts also agreed here. The study did not show that this new test will save lives, improve patient outcomes or serve as a real-world screening tool for healthy, asymptomatic populations (more testing needs to be done). Additionally, because the test is unable to detect all cancers, a negative test result would not rule out cancer, nor would it indicate a clean bill of health. Komorowski also noted that the study did not include precancerous lesions, such as polyps or early cervical cell changes, so it’s unknown whether the test can detect them.
How strong was the methodology?
Zauderer: I thought it was really strong and a very novel way of thinking about how to get the big haystack to the single bale of hay. The DNA methylation process is a pretty sophisticated analysis, but this was still a very early study, and it needs to be validated in a much bigger group with long-term outcomes.
Komorowski: They pre-selected the population; about half of the blood tested came from people who already knew they had cancer. And it was not an early cancer—it was more advanced cancer. Real-life screenings are different. I would want the research to show the test can find cancer someone didn’t know about, and it can be found early enough to improve survival rates.
How meaningful is this research?
Zauderer: I think it’s incredibly meaningful. I spend a lot of time looking for novel therapies to treat disease, but the most impactful touch point we have is preventing cancers or finding them earlier. That’s where we’ll have the biggest bang for our buck and impact the most lives. So this could be a preliminary step in finding some cancers earlier.
Komorowski: Instead of selecting 1,000 people without cancer, testing them, and watching them over the years, the researchers sped it up by testing 460 blood samples from people already diagnosed with cancer, samples from 200 people with a high risk of cancer and only 401 samples from people who apparently didn’t have cancer. That usually makes the number look better, yet in reality, it’s not as powerful a finding. But it was good at detecting liver cancer and liver disease.
Should this change patient behavior?
The experts agreed that this blood test is “not ready for prime time.” Continue your annual checkups and your standard screenings (mammograms, Pap smears, colonoscopies and lung scans for smokers) are still essential.
What remains unknown? What’s next?
Both experts say it remains unknown whether the test could save lives or improve long-term outcomes. Detecting cancer earlier would matter only if that earlier detection led to treatments that help patients live longer or avoid more serious disease states. The next step is for researchers to conduct large, randomized trials in asymptomatic people over time. Both experts say their best guess is that it will be at least 10 years before we might see this test at our annual check-ups, where it would likely be an initial step to flag certain issues. Komorowski believes it could take five to 10 years to determine whether the test reduces mortality—and about 20 years before it receives FDA approval, is incorporated into guidelines and becomes a routine screening tool.
Gia Miller is an award-winning journalist and the editor-in-chief/co-publisher of Connect to Northern Westchester. She has a magazine journalism degree (yes, that's a real thing) from the University of Georgia and has written for countless national publications, ranging from SELF to The Washington Post. Gia desperately wishes schools still taught grammar. Also, she wants everyone to know they can delete the word "that" from about 90% of their sentences, and there's no such thing as "first annual." When she's not running her media empire, Gia enjoys spending quality time with friends and family, laughing at her crazy dog and listening to a good podcast. She thanks multiple alarms, fermented grapes and her amazing husband for helping her get through each day. Her love languages are food and humor.
