Can Circulating Tumor DNA Support a Successful Screening Test for Early Cancer Detection? The Grail Paradigm

Autor: Oscar D. Pons-Belda, Amaia Fernandez-Uriarte, Eleftherios P. Diamandis
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Diagnostics, Vol 11, Iss 12, p 2171 (2021)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2075-4418
DOI: 10.3390/diagnostics11122171
Popis: Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) is a new pan-cancer tumor marker with important applications for patient prognosis, monitoring progression, and assessing the success of the therapeutic response. Another important goal is an early cancer diagnosis. There is currently a debate if ctDNA can be used for early cancer detection due to the small tumor burden and low mutant allele fraction (MAF). We compare our previous calculations on the size of detectable cancers by ctDNA analysis with the latest experimental data from Grail’s clinical trial. Current ctDNA-based diagnostic methods could predictably detect tumors of sizes greater than 10–15 mm in diameter. When tumors are of this size or smaller, their MAF is about 0.01% (one tumor DNA molecule admixed with 10,000 normal DNA molecules). The use of 10 mL of blood (4 mL of plasma) will likely contain less than a complete cancer genome, thus rendering the diagnosis of cancer impossible. Grail’s new data confirm the low sensitivity for early cancer detection (
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals
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