Faculty, Staff and Student Publications
Language
English
Publication Date
9-4-2025
Journal
Cancer Discovery
DOI
10.1158/2159-8290.CD-25-0375
PMID
40402478
PMCID
PMC12354160
PubMedCentral® Posted Date
8-25-2025
PubMedCentral® Full Text Version
Author MSS
Abstract
To explore how early can cancers be detected prior to clinical signs or symptoms, we assessed prospectively collected serial plasma samples from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study, including 26 participants diagnosed with cancer and 26 matched controls. At the index time point, eight of these 52 participants scored positively with a multicancer early detection (MCED) test. All eight participants were diagnosed with cancer within 4 months after blood collection. In six of these 8 participants, we were able to assess an earlier plasma sample collected 3.1 to 3.5 years prior to clinical diagnosis. In four of these six participants, the same mutations detected by the MCED test could be identified, but at 8.6 to 79-fold lower mutant allele fractions. These results demonstrate that it is possible to detect circulating tumor DNA more than three years prior to clinical diagnosis, and provide benchmark sensitivities required for this purpose.
Keywords
Humans, Neoplasms, Male, Early Detection of Cancer, Female, Middle Aged, Aged, Circulating Tumor DNA, Cell-Free Nucleic Acids, Biomarkers, Tumor, Mutation, Prospective Studies, Case-Control Studies
Published Open-Access
yes
Recommended Citation
Wang, Yuxuan; Joshu, Corinne E; Curtis, Samuel D; et al., "Detection of Cancers Three Years prior to Diagnosis Using Plasma Cell-Free DNA" (2025). Faculty, Staff and Student Publications. 5362.
https://digitalcommons.library.tmc.edu/uthgsbs_docs/5362
Included in
Bioinformatics Commons, Biomedical Informatics Commons, Genetic Phenomena Commons, Medical Genetics Commons, Oncology Commons