A new method corrected with errors to detect cancer from blood samples is much more sensitive and accurate than previous methods and may be useful for monitoring the condition of the disease in patients after treatment, according to a study by Weill Cornell Medicine and Genome Center researchers. The method, based on the DNA sequence of the entire genome, also represents an important step towards the target of the usual blood -based examination to detect cancer.
In the study, published on April 11 in nature methods, researchers compare the performance of cancer detection of a new Ultima Genomics trading platform. They have shown that a low-cost platform, such as this, allows a very high “depth” of coverage-a measure of the quality of sequence data-to detect extremely low concentrations of circulating volume. Adding a method of correction of bugs significantly improved the accuracy of the technique.
We are now introducing a time of low -cost DNA sequence and in this study we have taken advantage of this to apply the whole genome sequence techniques that would in the past be considered wildly impossible. “
Dr. Dan Landau, Senior Writer, Bibliowicz Medical Professor and Member of the Englander for Precision Medicine Institute and the Edward Meyer Cancer Center in Weill Cornell Medicine and the main member of the New York Center
Blood -based “wet biopsy” technology for early detection and monitoring of cancer in patients could revolutionize cancer care. However, the detection of awareness and accurately of the cancer metallings, only from the tiny concentrations of DNA tumor in blood samples, has been involved in significant challenges. The Landau Laboratory for most of the last decade has been working to overcome these challenges using methods based on the whole genome sequence-not just a targeted sequence of DNA parts where mutations are expected. In a study published last year, they showed that they could reliably detect advanced melanoma and lung cancer from patient blood samples, even without access to sequence data from tumor samples.
In the new study, they took their approach a step further. First, they showed that the low cost of a new sequence identification platform allows for a depth of the whole genome sequence that would be prohibitively expensive with older technology. Using only this platform and having the well -known mutated patterns in patients as a driver, they were able to detect the DNA tumor in patient blood samples at concentrations in the section per million. All samples in the study were collected after receiving informed consent from patients.
The group then reinforced the accuracy of this approach with a method of correction of bugs that uses surplus information in natural DNA with two propellers. They have shown that the combined technique has extremely low error rates, making them first use in blood samples without also having access to patient tumors.
Collaborating with other research groups, the researchers have shown the possibility of this high sensitivity, low approach, using it to detect and evaluate very low levels of cancer in patients with bladder cancer and melanoma only from blood samples.
“This collaboration has allowed us to analyze the circulating of a tumor of patients with bladder cancer and identify the separate mutated signatures that have extensively studied my workshop,” said Dr. Bishoy M. Faltas, head of the Englander Institute for Medicine research service and Associate Professor of Medicine and Cellular and Development Biology in Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Faltas is also a urologist oncologist at the Newyork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. “The incorporation of these signatures into the analysis significantly increased the sensitivity of DNA detection of circulating volume.”
“We were able, for example, to see increases in tumor DNA levels circulating after treatment in cancer patients who have advanced or repeated and decreased to these levels in patients whose cancers had complete or some answers,” said first author Dr. Alexandre Cheng, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Landau Laboratory during the study.
“These results allow us to think of a future in which we can detect and monitor cancer only from blood tests,” said Dr. Landau, who is also an oncologist at Newyork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Source:
Magazine report:
Cheng, AP, et al. (2025). The sequence based on the flow of flow of the whole genome and its application to circulating cell DNA profile. Methods of nature. Doi.org/10.1038/S41592-025-02648-9.
