Advances in Non-invasive Early Cancer Detection

Bluestar Genomics are to share their new non-invasive data for earlier cancer detection at the 11th CNAPs International Symposium.

Bluestar Genomics has previously demonstrated the viability of using its novel 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) technology for early detection of breast and pancreatic cancer and these new data are the first to demonstrate 5hmC’s ability to detect both indolent and aggressive prostate cancer at an early stage. Together, these data mark a significant advancement towards the development of Bluestar Genomics’ blood test for the detection of multiple cancers at the earliest stage of disease occurrence, when treatment is known to have the greatest curative impact on outcomes.

“These new exciting results confirm the potential of our proprietary 5hmC technology to reveal the first signs of cancers where the standard of care doesn’t reliably identify early signs of disease,” said Patrick Arensdorf, Chief Executive Officer, Bluestar Genomics.

By monitoring 5hmC profiles in cell-free DNA (cfDNA) Bluestar Genomics is able to detect the presence of cancer from a simple blood sample. For this study, the company’s scientists isolated cfDNA from plasma and identified epigenomic changes by comparing both cancer and non-cancer subjects with varying stages of disease and clinical characteristics. From there, machine learning algorithms were applied to create predictors that identified each cancer with high accuracy. The predictors demonstrated high performance for the identification of breast, pancreatic and prostate cancer with Area Under the Curve measures of 0.89, 0.95, and 0.83, respectively.

“Current biopsy methods for early-stage cancer detection are often invasive and painful, making tumor growth difficult to detect. Using a noninvasive liquid biopsy coupled with 5hmC changes we discovered that multiple cancers are measurable in cfDNA. The platform technology at Bluestar Genomics shows how the detection of the presence of cancer and concordant classification of tumor origin can be leveraged toward a robust clinical assay for routine cancer detection,” said Dr. Levy. “We continue to develop our technologies to provide for data-driven discoveries for broad application across the heterogeneity of disease."