Evaluation of cost-effective multiple cancer early detection with extremely low coverage whole genome sequencing from plasma.

Abstract

10538 Background: Cancer continues to be a significant global health concern, with approximately 19.3 million new cases diagnosed and 10.0 million cancer-related deaths reported in 2020. Multi-cancer early detection (MCED) test using the peripheral blood offers a great opportunity to improve the current cancer screening tests with better performance and benefit-to-harm balance. Methods: Here we introduce a novel MCED test called HIFI-PROF, which utilizes extremely low pass whole-genome sequencing (median coverage of 0.6X) to create a multi-dimensional fragmentation signatures model through machine learning approach. HIFI-PROF was developed to detect and localize six types of cancer (colorectal, pancreas, liver, lung, esophagus and gastric cancer). Results: The study included a total of 1,487 participants, comprising 235 colorectal cancers, 227 pancreatic cancers, 150 liver cancers, 125 lung cancers, 107 esophageal cancers, 106 gastric cancers and 537 healthy volunteers. Most of the cancer cases were I/II stage patients (stage I: 38%, stage II: 35%, stage III: 23%, stage IV: 4%). The participants, stratified by age and clinical status, were divided into two sets: a training set (n=1,079) and a validation set (n=408).HIFI-PROF exhibited an excellent performance in the early detection of multiple cancer types, achieving a sensitivity of 87.58% at a specificity of 99.09% and identifying the tissue of origin (TOO) with an accuracy of 81.99%. The sensitivity rates for detecting cancer at different stages were also promising, with a sensitivity of 84.62% for stage I, 85.59% for stage II, 89.61% for stage III and 92.86% for stage IV. Conclusions: These results highlight the high sensitivity and specificity of HIFI-PROF in identifying cancer cases while maintaining a low rate of false-positive results. The use of HIFI-PROF offers a cost-effective MCED test with excellent performance. Such advancements will contribute to improve strategies for multi-cancer early detection, leading to more effective clinical interventions and better outcomes.