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New hope for the early detection of oral and oesophageal cancer

We kick off this month’s review of the latest healthcare news hitting the headlines with an article from the New Scientist about the detection of oral and oesophageal cancer.

Early detection is perhaps the most important aspect of improving cancer survival, but many oral, particularly oesophageal cancers present quite late and so have a relatively poor prognosis.

The five-year survival rates for oral cancer and oesophageal cancer are 68% and 21%. With early detection, these improve to mid-80% and nearly 50% for oesophageal cancer, a big improvement. Yet, with few or nondescript symptoms oral and oesophageal cancers are challenging.

The New Scientist reports on an AI tool that has been developed in the US. A team from the biotech company Viome, in New York, studied just over a thousand patients who were over fifty or had a history of smoking (a risk factor for these cancers).

They took saliva samples and studied the genetic material of the bacteria and fungi in the samples. Their analysis included 92 patients with one of these cancers. They identified 88 unique changes in the genetic material of the bacteria in those with cancer compared to those without cancer. They then used the information to train an AI tool and tested it out on a further 230 samples. The results were very impressive – the tool accurately identified 90% of those with cancer.

The test received fast track support from the US drugs regulator and will soon be commercially available.

This is very encouraging, and it holds out the possibility of a tool for early identification. There’s more work to be done; the numbers in this study were relatively small, and it requires further study, BUT it is a big step forward in the early detection of some pretty bad news cancers.