New research could wed liquid biopsy and the microbiome
The majority of liquid biopsy researched has focused on spotting telltale tumor DNA in the blood to diagnose cancer. But a new method promises to spotlight cancer-related bacteria and viruses floating around in the bloodstream, lighting the way to a new avenue of research.
As STAT’s Rebecca Robbins reports, researchers at the University of California, San Diego, said they have developed machine learning models that might distinguish between cancer types based on microbial DNA in the blood.
To test the idea, the researchers sequenced blood microbes from 59 patients with prostate cancer, 25 patients with lung cancer, 16 patients with melanoma, and 69 healthy volunteers, and then challenged the models to differentiate between them. Those models correctly identified 86% of the people who actually had lung cancer and 100% of the people who did not. They also correctly distinguished between cases of prostate cancer and lung cancer 81% of the time.
It’s early days for the approach, and the results come with the sizable caveat that more patient data is needed. But the results introduce “a completely new kind of information that you can get out of a liquid biopsy,” said Rob Knight, a UCSD researcher and senior author of the study.
Read more.
As STAT’s Rebecca Robbins reports, researchers at the University of California, San Diego, said they have developed machine learning models that might distinguish between cancer types based on microbial DNA in the blood.
To test the idea, the researchers sequenced blood microbes from 59 patients with prostate cancer, 25 patients with lung cancer, 16 patients with melanoma, and 69 healthy volunteers, and then challenged the models to differentiate between them. Those models correctly identified 86% of the people who actually had lung cancer and 100% of the people who did not. They also correctly distinguished between cases of prostate cancer and lung cancer 81% of the time.
It’s early days for the approach, and the results come with the sizable caveat that more patient data is needed. But the results introduce “a completely new kind of information that you can get out of a liquid biopsy,” said Rob Knight, a UCSD researcher and senior author of the study.
Read more.
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