Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
a leading Blood Examination Designed for over 50 screen types cancerCurrently being evaluated by NHSIt correctly identified the disease in about two-thirds of the cases identified.
The Gallery test, which may be conducted annually, detects DNA fragments left behind by cancer cells in the bloodstream, often indicating disease before symptoms appear.
An important US trial, Pathfinder 2, has shown its high efficacy in ruling out cancer in healthy individuals and identifying cases at an early, more treatable stage.
Of the participants who had a “cancer signal” in their blood, 61.6 percent were later diagnosed.
Importantly, the test located the organ or tissue of origin in 92 percent of cases, potentially saving time and resources on further diagnostic procedures.
More than half (53.5 percent) of the new cancers were found in stage I or II, with more than two-thirds (69.3 percent) identified in stages I to III.
The test, which has been dubbed the holy grail of cancer tests, also correctly ruled out cancer in 99.6 percent of people who did not have the disease.
The findings are being presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) congress in Berlin.
Sir Harpal Kumar, chair of international business and biopharma at Grail, which led the gallery, and former head of Cancer Research UK, said the findings were impressive.
He told the PA news agency: “We’re really excited and we think this is another step towards really changing cancer outcomes.”
The Pathfinder 2 study looked at how the Galeri test could be used in a real-world setting alongside routine screening programs for things like breast and bowel cancer.
Asymptomatic people were recruited from the US and Canada, of whom 23,161 were analyzed and had a follow-up period of at least 12 months.
The results showed that adding gallstones to routine cancer screening increased the number of cancers detected within a year by more than sevenfold.
The test found signs of cancer in 216 people and cancer was diagnosed in 133 of these people.
Therefore, the probability of receiving a cancer diagnosis after a positive test result showing “cancer signs” was 61.6 percent.
Sir Harpal told PA: “We wanted to assess what added value the test provides over and above existing screening?
“And one of the most important and exciting results is the fact that it detected seven times more cancers than other screening programs.”
He said screening programs in the US are slightly different from those in the UK but “in terms of the screening programs offered, it’s comparable.”
The NHS Gallery trial of how well the test works in screening people without symptoms is expected to be published in the middle of next year.
Sir Harpal said: “Assuming we get positive results from the NHS gallery, the opportunity to detect a significantly higher number of cancers before they become clinically apparent means we should be able to detect a much greater number of them at an earlier stage.
“This opens up the possibility that we can access more effective treatments and, in many cases, curative treatments.
“This should make a substantial difference to cancer outcomes.
“It is also particularly effective in types of cancer where we have no other screening at the moment – and in types that are usually diagnosed very late, such as pancreas, head and neck, liver and ovary, etc.
“By complementing existing screening, we can detect many more cancers even before symptoms appear, which has the potential to truly change the way cancer is diagnosed and the outcomes we can expect.
“Once we get those results next year, we would hope that the NHS would move very quickly to implementation evaluation across the NHS.”
Sir Harpal said the fact that the test can also tell which organ or tissue the cancer is in makes “the diagnostic process very efficient and quick”.
The gallery can also assist doctors treating patients whose symptoms may be vague.
Sir Harpal said: “If someone has stomach pain, you can ask: is it ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, colorectal cancer – or is it not cancer at all?
“If we can help physicians direct those tests, we can make better use of this very rare diagnostic potential.”
Modeling suggests gallery testing could be effective annually blood test Cancer cases start increasing rapidly in people after the age of 50.
“Our analysis shows it will be cost-effective over the age of 50,” Sir Harpal said, adding that there would also be some younger people, such as those already diagnosed with cancer or with a genetic predisposition to the disease, who may also benefit.
Research published in the journal BMJ Open in May found that annual blood testing for cancer could lead to 49 percent fewer late-stage diagnoses and 21 percent fewer deaths within five years than patients receiving usual care.
Josh Offerman, president of GRAIL, said: “These results are extremely impressive given that nearly three-quarters of the cancers found by GRAIL do not have screening tests recommended today.”
Responding to the findings, Professor Claire Turnbull of the Institute of Cancer Research, London, said data was needed on whether trials such as Galleri had an impact on reducing cancer mortality.
Professor Nitzan Rosenfeld, director of the Barts Cancer Institute in London, said the results were “impressive” and that the 62 per cent figure was “very encouraging” and provided strong evidence that the trial could be safe and informative.
He said more data on mortality is needed, but added: “Importantly, more than 50 percent of the cancers detected by the Galeri test in this study were early stage (stage I-II), and more than 75% of them do not have the usual screening options.”
Anna Schuh, a professor of molecular diagnostics at the University of Oxford, said that according to the findings, the chance that a person with a positive test result actually has cancer is about 60 percent.
“Or in other words: About half the time, when the test says a positive result it’s wrong,” she said.
“This is disappointing because it is only marginally better than flipping a coin, although better than current screening tests where most positive results still turn up nothing.”
He suggested that the current rate of detection may mean that the NHS does not consider it a cost-effective test.
He said the test sensitivity was “good for some common cancers (where it was 74 percent), but not so much for others (which make up more than half the cancers overall) as the diagnostic sensitivity for these is poor (40 percent).”