Early Cancer Detection: Will New Screening Technology Disrupt Cancer Care?

Early cancer detection diagnostics, along with the success of anti-smoking campaigns, are the two biggest reasons for declining mortality rates in cancer over the last several decades, even as immunotherapies, precision oncology treatments and other innovations targeting late stage cancers are improving outcomes – to an extent. To truly bend the mortality curve in oncology, early cancer detection is needed beyond the five cancer types for which routine screening products and national guidelines already exist: breast cancer, cervical cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer and lung cancer in high-risk individuals, according to a growing number of clinicians and cancer researchers, and early detection diagnostics product developers.

In late October 2020, In Vivo and Medtech Insight convened a virtual panel to better understand the potential impact of early, multi-cancer detection diagnostics, as well as the significant challenges to broad adoption and commercialization. Panelists included Sam Asgarian, chief medical officer, Thrive Earlier Detection Corp.; Helmy Eltoukhy, CEO, Guardant Health, Inc.; Harris Kaplan, managing partner, Red Team Associates and CEO of Healogix; and Azra Raza, Chan Soon-Shiong professor of medicine and director of the MDS Center at Columbia University in New York City