UC San Diego and collaborators developed a blood-based ctDNA methylation method for the early detection and prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), published in Nature Materials.
From University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center.
An international team at UC San Diego and Moores Cancer Center, with colleagues at Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center and other institutions, developed a new method for the early detection and prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) based on a simple blood sample containing circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA). The findings were published in Nature Materials.
“HCC and its precursor, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, have increased markedly during the past decade and disproportionally affect Hispanic males. This novel report has major implications locally and globally on this devastating disease. It’s also the first report to support the potential of ctDNA for early detection for any cancer.”
The researchers examined hundreds of thousands of methylation profiles from HCC patients and healthy controls, identified a specific panel of methylation markers correlated with HCC, and used machine learning and statistical methods to evaluate their performance in 1,098 HCC patients and 835 normal controls.
“In a large clinical cohort, our blood-based HCC diagnosis highly correlated with tumor burden, treatment response and stage of cancer. Our study is a great demonstration of proof-of-concept for a new, more effective approach that applies to solid malignancies, HCC and beyond.”
This foundational ctDNA-methylation research is among the science that underpins Helio Genomics’ liver-cancer detection technology; the study is listed among our publications.
Related: Nature on earlier liver cancer detection with ECLIPSE
Source: UC San Diego, published in Nature Materials. Read the full article.