Cancer Screening Companies Are Rapidly Proliferating: Are They Ready for Business?

Cancer screening has been a major research front for decades. The classical circulating biomarkers for cancer (such as PSA, CEA, CA125, AFP, etc.) are neither sensitive nor specific and are not recommended for population screening. Recently, circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) emerged as a new pan-cancer tumor marker, with much promise for clinical applicability. ctDNA released by tumor cells can be used as a proxy of the tumor burden and molecular composition. It has been hypothesized that if ctDNA is extracted from plasma and analyzed for genetic changes, it may form the basis for a non-invasive cancer detection test. Lately, there has been a proliferation of "for-profit" companies that will soon offer cancer screening services. Here, we comment on Grail, Thrive, Guardant, Delfi, and Freenome. Previously, we identified some fundamental difficulties associated with this new technology. In addition, clinical trials are exclusively case-control studies. The sensitivities/specificities/predictive values of the new screening tests have not been well-defined or, the literature-reported values are rather poor. Despite these deficiencies some of the aforementioned companies are already testing patients. We predict that the premature use of ctDNA as a cancer screening tool may add another disappointment in the long history of this field.