Nat Med: Liquid biopsy can accurately detect early kidney cancer

Kidney cancer is a common malignant tumor in urology, the incidence rate accounts for 2% to 3% of adult malignant tumors, although there are many symptoms of kidney cancer, but thediagnosis of kidney canceris not easyA recent study published in the journal Nature Medicine suggests that liquid biopsies can accurately detect early kidney cancerIt is estimated that about 35 per cent of kidney cancer can only be diagnosed when it spreads beyond the kidneys, making treatment more difficultSmall, early kidney tumors usually have no symptoms, and in many cases they are discovered by chance while the patient is doing other testsScientists at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute,, say a new liquid biopsy method can detect kidney cancer with high precision, including small, curable, localkidney tumors that are not detected by the usual teststudy, published June 22 in the journal Nature Medicine, suggests that if validated and widely used in larger trials, this non-invasive test could detect more early renal cancer that has not spread, thereby reducing mortality from the disease"We hope to expand this study to a broader area, to detect cancer earlier, and to act earlier," said Toni Choueiri, M.D., director of the Dana-Farber Center for Reproductive Urology and co-author of the study at the"
the technical name of the detection method is cfMeDIP-seq, i.ecell-free methylation DNAimmunoassayprecipitation and high-throughput sequencing Other methods of fluid biopsy are to look for mutations in tumor shedding DNA to reveal the type and location of the cancer, while cfMeDIP-seq detects dna abnormalmethylation, i.e chemical labeling on DNA, which does not change their genetic code but affects their function "However, for the general population, they usually do not use imaging or other screening to detect early renal cancer," Joyly As a result, the tests described in the new study may initially be used to screen people with a family history of kidney cancer, or people with a history of kidney cancer We need to be clear before we can make it fully mainstream Dr Matthew Freedman, a medical oncologist at Dana Farber of the , said: "Non-invasive liquid biopsies are a way to find cancer-related DNA in blood or other body fluids and are rapidly evolving into clinical applications as a means of detecting certain tumors at an early stage However, kidney cancer is one of the most difficult to detect because it doesn't shed as much DNA as other tumors This is where the test performs very well, because it can identify abnormal patterns in a small number of tumor shedding DNA This is an early-stage proof of principle "
when blood samples were used to distinguish between kidney cancer patients and those without kidney cancer, the accuracy of the test was close to 100% This method is less accurate when testing urine samples, but the researchers believe that performance can be improved If the test is proven in larger trials and is widely used in clinical practice, the urine sample smaller incursion than blood extraction "The method detected 99 patients with early and advanced kidney cancer, 15 patients with stage IV urethra bladder cancer, and 28 healthy cancer-free patients," the authors of the study wrote When analyzing serum with this test, the study looked at the "near-perfect" classification of patients at all stages of kidney cancer Although urine-based classification is less precise, we believe that technical and computational optimization can improve performance "