Blood test technology detects lung cancer with 90% accuracy

A novel artificial intelligence blood testing technology was found to detect over 90% of lung cancers in samples from nearly 800 individuals with and without cancer. Applying this technology to blood samples taken from 796 individuals in Denmark, the Netherlands, and the U.S., investigators found that the DELFI approach accurately distinguished between patients with or without lung cancer.

Lung cancer is cancer that forms in tissues of the lung, usually in the cells that line the air passages. It is the leading cause of cancer death in both men and women. There are two main types: small cell lung cancer and non-small cell lung cancer. These two types grow differently and are treated differently.

A large proportion of participants were at high risk for lung cancer and had smoking-related symptoms such as cough or difficulty breathing. The DELFI approach found that patients who were later determined to have cancer had wide variation in their profiles, while patients found not to have cancer had consistent profiles. Conclusively researchers revealed over 90% of the patients with lung cancer with mild or severe symptoms.

DNA fragmentation patterns provide a remarkable fingerprint for early detection of cancer that we believe could be the basis of a widely available liquid biopsy test for patients with lung cancer," says author Rob Scharpf, Ph.D. associate professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

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