Cancer will soon become the greatest cause of mortality in the world. The war against cancer has historically been focused on “high-cost late-stage” treatment. The vast majority of patients who die from cancer die only because their cancers were in advanced stages at detection. We need to change the current paradigm. A key in reducing cancer mortality is specifically provided by "early detection”, finding a cancer at an early stage when it can be safely removed.
This project aims to conduct a pilot study for the validation and CLIA certification of a novel sequencing approach that we developed at TGen (BestSeqS & DiMotif) for the early detection of cancer via a simple minimally-invasive blood test. Specifically, this project aims to analyze blood samples from 1,400 participants, some with cancers and some healthy, by using a novel sequencing approach (BestSeqS & DiMotif) that enables the early detection of cancer at a fraction of the cost (~$200) of the few available methodologies in development today. The samples will be split in training (n=450), validation (n-450) and final testing (n=500) to provide a proper final testing of the technology.
The success of this pilot study will enable a full follow-up large (n=30,000) randomized VALETE clinical trial in the general population.
