Long-awaited data from Grail’s Circulating Cell-free Genome Atlas (CCGA) has lent credence to the fact that the company has the capability to detect early-stage cancer traces in the bloodstream.

Three of the company’s prototype genome-sequencing assays were evaluated using samples from lung cancer patients. Early support for the concept was demonstrated with detection rates ranging from 38% to 51% in participants in participants with early-stage lung cancer at 98% specificity.

Early stage data from CCGA holds tremendous promise as it hints at the fact that it is possible for lung cancer detection through DNA signals in the blood in earlier stages when there are higher chances of survival.

Blood samples from 1,627 participants in the first phase of the substudy with and without cancer were sequenced, which include 20 cancer types across all stages.

Cell-free DNA and white blood cells to check alterations such as single nucleotide variants were paired with the sequenced prototype assays in 127 lung cancer patients, small placing and deletions; somatic copy number changes; and abnormal cfDNA methylation patterns.

Detection rates ranged from 59% to 92% across all stages in patients with adenocarcinoma, squamous cell, and small cell lung cancers, with wrong positive rates under 2%.

Targeted sequencing for small mutations and variations detected 51% of stages I-IIIA lung cancers, while whole-genome assays of somatic changes and methylation patterns identified 38% and 41%, respectively. The three tests performed about the same in later stages of a disease, detecting 87% to 89% of cases.