The program works by looking for specific molecular patterns in cancer DNA that is free flowing in the patients' blood and comparing the patterns against a database of DNA associated with different types of cancer. DNA from tumor cells is known to end up in the bloodstream in the earliest stages of cancer and offers a unique target for early detection of the disease.
In this study, published in the March 24, 2017 journal BioMed Central, the new computer program and two other methods (called Random Forest and Support Vector Machine) were tested with blood samples from 29 liver cancer patients, 12 lung cancer patients and 5 breast cancer patients. Tests were run 10 times on each sample to validate the results.
The program was able to identify the cancer in 80 percent of the 25 of 29 early cases of liver cancer and 5 out of 12 early cases of lung cancer patients.
Although the level of tumor DNA present in the blood is much lower during the early stages of these cancers, the researcher say the program was still able to make a diagnosis demonstrating the potential of this method for the early detection of cancer.
Although the level of tumor DNA present in the blood is much lower during the early stages of these cancers, the researcher say the program was still able to make a diagnosis demonstrating the potential of this method for the early detection of cancer.
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