2023-10-04 04:27:15
Oncology remains subject to the dictatorship of statistics: 90% of patients whose cancer was detected early survive, but only 10% of those diagnosed late survive. Therefore, a simple blood test Making it possible to detect the disease in the early stages of its development would mean a new medical era and this is what the young German scientist Alex Meissner, director of the Department of Genomic Regulation at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, seems to have achieved. He has obtained an investment of 200 million to test his test on 10,000 people in the United States and the first thousand analyzes carried out show that In 2025 the application for approval will be submitted before the medical authorities of this country.
The key to its discovery is that the tumor tissue behaves in a very similar way to placental tissue, as if the cancer used an embryonic program for its development. Meissner has investigated how the largest types of specialized cells in humans gradually develop from an embryo’s stem cells: which of the genome’s approximately 20,000 genes are turned on and which are turned off when a skin or brain cell matures. liver. “Cancer itself is part of a cell that has been accidentally activated by the placental program and is then linked to further mutations in cancer-promoting genes,” explains Meissner.
Their blood test has been designed to track these mutations in the metastasis process. He calls it ‘cancerous signature‘, which should be able to diagnose any type of cancer in early stages. The basic idea was already known, but bioinformatics methods have improved in recent years and now allow these patterns to be used for diagnosis.
Boston-based venture capital firm Flagship, founder of the now highly regarded ARN Moderna, offered to finance the development. But Harbinger Health, the company that has gotten to work, is far from the only one trying to detect cancer through a blood test: Grail, which uses artificial intelligence, hopes to complete a large study in 2026, in looks for cancerous DNA in the blood. Hanse Merkur Insurance is working in Darmstadt on a PanTum Detect test, designed to detect typical cancer enzymes in the blood. The traditional Roche investigates the early detection of lung cancer through blood tests, with the aim of marketing a drug for treatment in the early stages of the disease. This is a multi-billion dollar market. The problem so far has been that the tests had a relatively high error rate and many test diagnoses subsequently turn out to be incorrect.
Meissner not only analyzes the genetic sequence of the fragments, but also the methyl groups that sit like spines on the genes. If the spines are missing, the gene fragments probably came from a cancer cell. By focusing on the methylation pattern, the epigenetic on-off switches of many genes, it is possible to detect thousands of characteristic pieces of genetic material that manifest the cancer signature, thus achieving more reliability in the diagnosis. It is also possible determine in which tissue or organ cancerous development occurs. Perhaps even a pattern of tumor size, thanks to the amount of tumor-specific DNA contained in the blood sample, although Meissner acknowledges that “we’re not there yet.”
In the first pilot study, a high sensitivity of the test was already detected, which correctly indicated between 70% and 90% of cases, depending on the type of cancer. There is still no scientific certainty, but these indications already allow us to imagine health systems in which at least risk groups can regularly undergo blood tests capable of detecting the disease in its earliest phase. The question of price remains to be resolved: Meissner does not give data, but The market estimates the cost of each analysis at around a thousand euros., which with its widespread practice and the passage of years could cost between 150 and 300 euros. And you also have to find the treatment: for a cancer detected at a very early stage, chemotherapy will not be indicated and perhaps you can only wait for it to develop a little further. Or not. The blood test also opens the door to new questions.
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