Eric Klein, MD: The Promise of Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening

Would you want to know if cancer is in your health future? In many cases, detecting cancers early before they metastasize and when they are more easily treated is the key to survival and return to good health. Unfortunately, many aggressive cancers are identified in the later stages of progression, making treatment difficult and sometimes ineffective. Today, however, biomedical companies are racing to develop cancer screening technologies that may ultimately change the trajectory of cancer mortality. Leading that effort is GRAIL with its first-to-market Galleri multi-cancer early detection test, which is awaiting FDA approval. In this episode of Healthy Longevity, Dr. Comite discusses this pioneering test with Eric A. Klein, MD, a distinguished scientist at GRAIL and a long-time urologist and surgical oncologist.  You'll learn… ·       Currently, we can screen for only cervical, breast, colon, lung, and prostate cancers.  ·       Standard screening tests only detect 14 percent of cancers. More than 80 percent of people who die of cancer succumb to cancers for which there is no screening. ·       While those current tests reduce mortality, we still lose more than 600,000 patients yearly in the U.S. to cancer. ·       Multi-cancer screening tests like Galleri fill an unmet need for finding the deadliest cancers before they become symptomatic. ·       Cancers growing in the body shed DNA into the bloodstream. These DNA fragments act like a fingerprint of cancer that the Galleri blood test can detect. ·       When a cancer fingerprint is found, the test can predict the type of organ or tissue it is linked to, which can help doctors home in on the most effective treatment. ·       1 in 200 people who take the Galleri test receive a false positive. More than 90 percent of those determined to have cancer will benefit by learning the origin of the cancer.