Simple, blood-based screening for colorectal cancer would greatly facilitate screening compliance, but to be clinically meaningful it must detect cancer across multiple clinical parameters. A multimodal circulating tumor DNA test, described at the 2021 annual meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology, may do just that, researchers from the Republic of Korea reported.
“Our multimodal circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) colorectal cancer screening test has clinically meaningful sensitivity across multiple clinical parameters, most notably in patients with early-stage asymptomatic disease and early-stage low-grade tumors,” said Hee Cheol Kim, MD, a professor at Samsung Medical Center, in Seoul, the Republic of Korea.