[Apr. 22, 2023: Staff Writer, The Brighter Side of News]
An AI-based home screening test to detect mouth and throat cancers from saliva samples is now available in the United States. (CREDIT: Creative Commons)
An AI-based home screening test to detect mouth and throat cancers from saliva samples is now available in the United States in hopes of transforming oral cancer detection and of the throat.
Based on technology approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a “breakthrough device”, the saliva test can detect early symptoms of mouth and throat cancer with an accuracy of more than 90%.
Due to a lack of effective diagnostic tools, these cancers often go undiagnosed until they reach an advanced stage, resulting in low survival rates.
In a previous studyMaria Soledad Sosa of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Julio A. Aguirre-Ghiso, now at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, discovered that cancer cells’ ability to stay dormant is controlled by a protein called NR2F1.
This receptor protein can enter the cell nucleus and turn many genes on or off to activate a program that prevents cancer cells from proliferating. NR2F1 levels are typically low in primary tumors, but high in dormant disseminated cancer cells. Levels of the NR2F1 protein then decline again when cancer cells begin to proliferate again and form recurrent or metastatic tumors.
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“We therefore thought that activating NR2F1 using a small molecule could be an interesting clinical strategy to induce cancer cell dormancy and prevent recurrence and metastasis,” explains Aguirre-Ghiso.
In the new JEM study, Sosa and Aguirre-Ghiso’s teams used a computerized screening approach to identify a drug, named C26, that activates NR2F1. The researchers found that treating patient-derived HNSCC cells with C26 increased NR2F1 levels and stopped cell proliferation.
CancerDetect™, produced by Viome Life Sciences, brings unprecedented accuracy to the early detection and prevention of cancer as the only oral and throat cancer test to offer detection with 95% specificity and 90% sensitivity. Mouth and throat cancer is notoriously difficult to detect. Until now, it can often go undiagnosed until it has reached an advanced stage due to a lack of effective diagnostic tools, resulting in low survival rates.
Only 28% of patients are diagnosed early, and those who are diagnosed late face a protracted battle with oral cancer. (National Library of Medicine). Early detection directly increases the 5-year survival rate of oral cancer patients from 50% to 84%. With CancerDetect™, Viome has developed an indispensable aid to detect cancer at an early stage, leading to more effective treatment results when confirmed by biopsy.
“Despite all the innovations in healthcare, mouth and throat cancer has remained a deadly disease with few options for early detection,” said Naveen Jain, Founder and CEO of Viome Life Sciences.
“As an industry leader with a mission to identify and treat the roots of chronic disease, we have worked for years to bring to market clinically supported diagnostic solutions for the detection of cancer and other diseases. potentially fatal and debilitating. With the launch of CancerDetect™ for mouth and throat cancer, we have achieved this goal and plan to follow it soon with detection tools for other life-threatening chronic diseases and cancers,” he said. for follow-up.
To develop a more accurate diagnostic tool for cancer patients, Viome researchers began studying how the microbiome has changed, a collection of all the microbes that naturally exist on our bodies and within us, along with their genes. . As a result of previous research, people with mouth or throat cancer have different oral flora than those without cancer.
Guruduth Bavanar, Head of Discovery, AI and Engineering at Viome, explained, “We collected saliva samples from people aged 50 or older, or adults with a history of smoking – two risk factors for mouth and throat cancer. From each sample, we extracted the genetic material of bacteria, fungi and skin cells.”
In order to train a machine learning model, the scientists used genetic data from 945 samples, 80 of which were from people with oral cancer and 12 from people with throat cancer.
“A major benefit of machine learning is that the more data we collect, the more accurate the tool becomes,” Bavanar told reporters.
88 specific changes in gene expression have been identified in people with mouth and throat cancer, along with 182 unique genetic characteristics in their bacteria.
The researchers then tested their model with the remaining 230 study samples, 82 of which were from people with cancer.
CancerDetect™ – Oral & Throat is the first test of its kind, designed to empower consumers with advanced testing made accessible from the comfort of their own home. (CREDIT: Viome)
The tests correctly identified 90% of samples from people with cancer and 95% of samples from people without cancer, indicating very low rates of false negatives or false positives.
Buy the test online
“With CancerDetect, Viome has developed a much-needed aid to detect cancer at an early stage, leading to more effective treatment outcomes when confirmed by biopsy,” Bavanar added.
People at high risk of mouth or throat cancer can now buy the test online after completing a questionnaire with Viome and getting results within two weeks.
“A telehealth provider actually reviews the information provided by the customer before ordering the test. Authorized healthcare providers will contact the customer if there is a positive result and the customer can also contact a Viome telehealth partner to ask any questions they might have about the test,” Banavar explained.
According to the company, it will continue to seek FDA approval, which would allow the test to be covered by health insurance providers.
“Despite all the innovations in healthcare, mouth and throat cancer has remained a deadly disease with few options for early detection,” said Naveen Jain, Founder and CEO of Viome Life Sciences.
“As an industry leader with a mission to identify and treat the roots of chronic disease, we have worked for years to bring clinically supported diagnostic solutions to the market for the detection of cancer and other diseases. potentially deadly and debilitating”.
“With the launch of CancerDetect for mouth and throat cancer, we have achieved this goal and plan to follow it soon with detection tools for other chronic diseases and life-threatening cancers.”
For more scientific news, see our New Innovations section on The bright side of the news.
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