GRAIL today announced that validation data for its multi-cancer early detection blood test were published in Annals of Oncology. These data show that GRAIL’s technology can detect more than 50 cancer types across all stages, with a false positive rate of less than 1%, through a single blood draw. When a cancer signal is detected, the test can also identify the tissue of origin—where the cancer is located in the body—with 93% accuracy.
“At GRAIL, we believe that multi-cancer early detection has the potential to significantly reduce cancer mortality,” said Alex Aravanis, MD, PhD, chief scientific officer, co-founder, and head of R&D at GRAIL. “This is a seminal moment in the field of cancer detection. We’ve built what we believe to be one of the largest clinical study programs ever conducted in genomic medicine, and the data published in Annals of Oncology further support GRAIL’s approach and commitment to clinical and scientific rigor.”
The publication includes data from a sub-study of GRAIL’s foundational Circulating Cell-free Genome Atlas (CCGA), which included more than 15,000 participants with or without a diagnosis of cancer.
GRAIL also published new data modeling the most recent SEER statistics in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, showing that if all cancers currently diagnosed at stage IV could be diagnosed earlier, evenly distributed across stages I-III, cancer deaths could fall by 24%.
“The Human Genome Project ushered in the era of precision medicine, but the benefits have largely impacted patients with specific mutations or genetic diseases. GRAIL has combined the advances in human genomics with machine-learning data science to develop a multi-cancer early detection test that can maximize overall population detection while minimizing potential harms,” said GRAIL Chief Medical Officer and Chief of Corporate Strategy and External Affairs Joshua Ofman, MD, MSHS. “These validation data suggest that GRAIL’s test could be one of the first examples of a technology derived from insights from the Human Genome Project to have an impact at the broader population level, and could facilitate an important transition from screening for individual cancers, to screening individuals for all cancer types.”
The CCGA study is ongoing, and additional findings will be made publicly available at future medical meetings and/or in peer-reviewed publications.
Read the original press release here.
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