cancer diagnosis Archives - Amazing Health Advances

Cancers Can Be Detected in the Bloodstream Three Years Prior to Diagnosis

The AHA! Team — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 05:20:22 +0000

Johns Hopkins Medicine via Newswise – The study, partly funded by the National Institutes of Health, was published May 22 in Cancer Discovery. Genetic material shed by tumors can be detected in the bloodstream three years prior to cancer diagnosis, according to a study led by investigators at the Ludwig Center at Johns Hopkins, Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The study, partly funded by the National Institutes of Health, was published May 22 in Cancer Discovery. Investigators were surprised they could detect cancer-derived mutations in the blood so much earlier, says lead study author Yuxuan Wang, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “Three years earlier provides time for intervention. The tumors are likely to be much less advanced and more likely to be curable.” To determine how early cancers could be detected prior to clinical signs or symptoms, Wang and colleagues assessed plasma samples that were collected for the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study, a large National Institutes of Health-funded study to investigate risk factors for heart attack, stroke, heart failure and other cardiovascular diseases. They used highly accurate and sensitive sequencing techniques to analyze blood samples from 26 participants in the ARIC study who were diagnosed with cancer within six months after sample collection, and 26 from similar participants who were not diagnosed with cancer. At the time of blood sample collection, eight of these 52 participants scored positively on a multicancer early detection (MCED) laboratory test. All eight were diagnosed within four months following blood collection. For six of the eight individuals, investigators also were able to assess additional blood samples collected 3.1–3.5 years prior to diagnosis, and in four of these cases, tumor-derived mutations could also be identified in samples taken at the earlier timepoint. MCED tests “This study shows the promise of MCED tests in detecting cancers very early, and sets the benchmark sensitivities required for their success,” says Bert Vogelstein, M.D., Clayton Professor of Oncology, co-director of the Ludwig Center at Johns Hopkins and a senior author on the study. Detecting cancers years before their clinical diagnosis “Detecting cancers years before their clinical diagnosis could help provide management with a more favorable outcome,” adds Nickolas Papadopoulos, Ph.D., professor of oncology, Ludwig Center investigator and senior author of the study. “Of course, we need to determine the appropriate clinical follow-up after a positive test for such cancers.” The study was supported in part by National Institutes of Health grant #s R21NS113016, RA37CA230400, U01CA230691, P30 CA 06973, DRP 80057309, and U01 CA164975. Additional funding was provided by the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Fund for Cancer Research, the Commonwealth Fund, the Thomas M Hohman Memorial Cancer Research Fund, The Sol Goldman Sequencing Facility at Johns Hopkins, The Conrad R. Hilton Foundation, the Benjamin Baker Endowment, Swim Across America, Burroughs Wellcome Career Award for Medical Scientists, Conquer Cancer – Fred J. Ansfield, MD, Endowed Young Investigator Award, and The V Foundation for Cancer Research. The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study has been funded in whole or in part with federal funds from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under contract numbers 75N92022D00001, 75N92022D00002, 75N92022D00003, 75N92022D00004, and 75N92022D00005. To read the original article click here.

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Diagnosing Cancer From Biopsies in Minutes, Not Weeks

AHA Publisher — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 07:14:51 +0000

Brian Blum via Israel21c – When Dean Bitan’s mother was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer, the Israeli entrepreneur felt paralyzed. “But then my best friend told me, ‘Put your emotions aside and act like this is another project of yours,’” Bitan tells ISRAEL21c. “Standing on the frontlines with my mother, I learned a lot about the gaps in terms of treatment. I knew we can and should do better. So that’s what I decided I was going to do.” Bitan’s mother, sadly, passed away two years ago. But the result of Bitan’s fortitude would make any Jewish mother proud. Imagene, the startup Bitan founded in 2020 with Jonathan Zalach and Shahar Porat, has developed technology that can conduct a full molecular analysis on a digitized biopsy image in real time and return a result in minutes, instead of the current situation of a few weeks. How does Imagene do it? AI, of course. Imagene’s artificial intelligence is intended to “democratize” personalized medicine, Bitan explains, by allowing oncologists to obtain an accurate diagnosis and then initiate a precisely targeted therapy plan far sooner than ever before. When Dean Bitan’s mother was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer, the Israeli entrepreneur felt paralyzed. “But then my best friend told me, ‘Put your emotions aside and act like this is another project of yours,’” Bitan tells ISRAEL21c. “Standing on the frontlines with my mother, I learned a lot about the gaps in terms of treatment. I knew we can and should do better. So that’s what I decided I was going to do.” Bitan’s mother, sadly, passed away two years ago. But the result of Bitan’s fortitude would make any Jewish mother proud. Imagene, the startup Bitan founded in 2020 with Jonathan Zalach and Shahar Porat, has developed technology that can conduct a full molecular analysis on a digitized biopsy image in real time and return a result in minutes, instead of the current situation of a few weeks. How does Imagene do it? AI, of course. Imagene’s artificial intelligence is intended to “democratize” personalized medicine, Bitan explains, by allowing oncologists to obtain an accurate diagnosis and then initiate a precisely targeted therapy plan far sooner than ever before. Oracle founder Larry Ellison led a $21.5 million Series A investment in the company earlier this year. Ellison’s involvement is not out of character — he and Dr. David Agus founded the Institute for Transformative Medicine in 2016 with a mission to drive interdisciplinary patient-centered research. Agus was so impressed by Imagene’s tech that he sits on the company’s board. Assisting Pathologists Imagene’s AI searches for biomarkers in a digitized biopsy image to assist pathologists in classifying a tumor as cancerous or not and, if so, what kind. It’s a big step up from placing a tissue slide under a microscope and examining it manually. Imagene’s software can be integrated into the pathologist’s current workflow. “We’re agnostic to their settings,” Bitan says. “We don’t want to add any effort to these physicians.” An Imagene report summarizes the findings and points out actionable biomarkers, “including those that match targeted therapies and relevant clinical trials,” Bitan says. Imagene has developed models that can check for 28 biomarkers in eight organs including the lungs, thyroid, breasts and ovaries, with more on the way. “On average, our specificity and sensitivity are more than 95%,” Bitan notes. “Today, only around 15% of patients will be diagnosed with a biomarker that can lead to a precision medicine therapy. The goal is to push the boundaries of precision medicine, to make it more accessible and available,” Bitan tells ISRAEL21c. “Even in the US, there is a huge gap between the quality of diagnoses in an academic center and a community setting,” Bitan says. “By identifying actionable biomarkers, between 40 and 50% of lung cancer patients should be able to be diagnosed.” Agus call Imagene’s approach “theragnostics” – a combination of diagnosis and therapeutics. From All Angles The first step in Imagene’s analysis is defining what it’s looking at. “If you show me a glass, that’s the shape of the glass,” Bitan explains. “But what if I turn it? Now I’m changing the shape. AI changed the whole approach by teaching the computer by example.” Accordingly, Imagene trains its AI to recognize a mutation in a digitized biopsy image by showing it many pictures of biopsied tissue at different angles. Imagene is also addressing another cancer diagnosis challenge: It can be difficult to collect enough tissue to do a traditional microscope biopsy. This is the case with 20% of lung biopsies, Bitan says. Even worse, many lung cancer patients do not live long enough to benefit from genomic screening, which takes between 14 and 28 days. These challenges make it tough for pharmaceutical companies to identify and enroll patients in their precision medicine tests. It’s especially true for patients with rare conditions, where 26% of trials are terminated because of low accrual rates. “We can assist these companies with a super cost-efficient solution that can screen dozens of patients a day without wasting tissue,” Bitan says. Within 5 Years Imagene’s system does not yet have regulatory clearances, Bitan stresses. In anticipation of entering the US market, Imagene has set up a small office in the Philadelphia area. Bitan’s hope is that within five years, patients will be able to get a “comprehensive diagnosis at the point of care and then immediately discuss personalized treatment options or clinical trials. Just imagine what patients are dealing with when they have to wait for results to come in a month later – and that’s if precision medicine and NGS [next generation screening] is even offered in their area.” The Tel Aviv-based company, with 25 full-time staffers, has collaborated with Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center in Israel and with several medical facilities and pharmaceutical companies outside Israel whose identities are confidential. Imagene and Sheba recently published a paper in Modern Pathologydescribing the accuracy of AI models in detecting cancerous biomarkers in non-small cell lung cancer. “Imagene’s deep learning algorithms radically streamline cancer diagnosis and targeted therapy, and we are committed to continue and expand this collaboration to cover more cancer types and biomarkers,” said Prof. Iris Barshack, head of the Institute of Pathology at Sheba. Bioconvergence Bitan, a computer scientist by training, earned his undergraduate degree at age 15 and was a computer programmer during his military service. He notes that fast cancer diagnosis is more about engineering than biology. “When you need so much data to process and answer the question of whether this is cancer or not, that’s an engineering problem,” he says. “It’s about the way you collect the data and generate different insights out of it. Of course, you also need biologists and physicians in the picture, but at the end of the day, you need engineering and data science.” Israel, it turns out, has a real advantage in this kind of bioconvergence. It’s a small country where everyone knows everyone and where there is regular collaboration between universities and startups. “Add in some Israeli chutzpah – in the positive sense – and that drives many entrepreneurs to believe they can do things differently,” Bitan says. He tries never to lose sight of the ultimate end user. “Behind all the conferences and publications and numbers are real patients, and that’s too easy to forget when you’re looking at millions of slides. When we recruit new employees, the most important thing is that they have a strong desire to do good, to make a better future. That’s why we established Imagene,” he says. “When I was once asked if I had an opportunity to sit with anyone, who would it be, I said, ‘with the first patient where Imagene saved his or her life.’ This is why we do what we do.” For more information on Imagene, click here. To read the original article click here.

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Breakthrough Discovery Could Turn Cancer into a Treatable Disease

AHA Publisher — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 07:00:45 +0000

University of Salford via News-Medical Net – Professor Michael Lisanti and Professor Federica Sotgia have made a discovery that could turn cancer into a treatable disease and remove the fear from a cancer diagnosis. Despite years of research and billions of pounds of investment, there are no MHRA/FDA-approved drugs for the prevention of metastasis. As a consequence, cancer metastasis remains a mysterious, untreatable, lethal disease. What is cancer metastasis? Metastasis is what happens when cancer cells spread throughout the body, most often to other organs, like the brain, bone tissue, the lungs and the liver. Metastasis, more often than not, turns cancer into an untreatable, terminal disease. No effective therapies are available. After surgical removal of the primary tumor, most cancer patients are treated with chemo-therapy and radiation to eradicate the remaining tumor cells that have been left behind, by incomplete surgical removal of cancerous lesions. Unfortunately, many cancer patients ultimately undergo tumour recurrence, resulting in distant metastasis (cancer spread). As a result, more than 90% of these patients that undergo treatment failure, die from metastatic disease. Therefore, the discovery of inhibitors of metastasis could turn cancer into a chronic treatable disease and remove the fear from a cancer diagnosis. In order to fill this knowledge gap and meet clinical needs, researchers at the University of Salford have identified that the Achilles’ heel of metastasis is ATP-depletion, which can be achieved by simply removing the cancer cell’s ability to make new energy. Professor Michael Lisanti and Professor Federica Sotgia, who both work in Translational Medicine at The University of Salford, have designed and tested new inhibitors of cancer metastasis that are based on an existing FDA-approved antibiotic, namely Doxycycline, first approved in 1967. They have now chemically modified Doxycycline, making it 5 times more potent for the targeting of metastatic cancer cells. Fortunately, this modification also renders Doxycycline ineffective as an antibiotic, effectively removing the risk for the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria and infections. In addition, they show that this new drug, which is named Doxy-Myr, to reflect that addition of a fatty acid, is also non-toxic in pre-clinical studies. “While this new family of drugs must now undergo clinical trials the work directly shows proof of concept that it is feasible to successfully design drugs that can prevent metastasis, by targeting the process of cellular energy production. Hence, cutting off the fuel supply, prevents metastasis. This breakthrough could ultimately change clinical practice, by adding metastasis prevention, as a new, more effective, weapon in the war on cancer. ” (Professor Michael Lisanti, University of Salford) To read the original article click here.

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