Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) now allow for the detection of tumor DNA in blood with unparalleled precision. This breakthrough promises to significantly improve early cancer detection and recurrence monitoring, thus surpassing traditional methods.
The tool named MRD-EDGE has been developed by a team of researchers from institutions such as Weill Cornell Medicine and the New York Genome Center. With this technology, it is possible to detect circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) with great accuracy, using DNA sequencing data from blood tests. This innovation has been particularly effective for lung, breast, and colon cancers.
Dr. Dan Landau, one of the main authors of the study, emphasizes that the improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio has allowed for the detection of cancer recurrences well before standard clinical methods. This progress paves the way for earlier detection and more rigorous monitoring of tumor responses during treatments.
Traditionally, liquid biopsies have struggled to live up to their promises due to the difficulty in detecting cancer-associated mutations, often too rare in the blood. However, by adopting an approach based on whole-genome sequencing, researchers have been able to capture more “signals” and simplify the detection of tumor DNA.
Source : Techno-Science
