New liquid biopsy has potential to detect early kidney cancer

A new liquid biopsy can detect kidney cancers with high accuracy and before it has spread, according to scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer.

In the report published in Nature Medicine, blood samples from 99 patients with early and advanced kidney cancer, 15 patients with stage IV urothelial bladder cancer, and 28 cancer-free control subjects, were tested using cell-free methylated DNA immunoprecipitation and high-throughput sequencing (cfMeDIP-seq). In this testing method, abnormal methylation is detected whereas other liquid biopsy methods look for mutations in tumor-shed DNA.

In the samples tested in this report, the test had near-perfect accuracy when distinguishing between patients with kidney cancer and controls.

The researchers said the test still needs to be validated in larger trials.

Reference

Nuzzo PV, Berchuck JE, Korthauer K, et al. Detection of renal cell carcinoma using plasma and urine cell-free DNA methylomes, Nat Med. 2020;DOI: 10.1038/s41591-020-0933-1