From By David M. Waterhouse, MD, MPH, medical oncologist and co-director of research, OHC
April 9, 2018
David M. Waterhouse, MD, MPH
Medical Oncologist and Co-Chair, Department of Clinical Research, OHC
Researchers at OHC are participating in a clinical trial that, in the near future, could allow people to get a simple blood test to determine if they have cancer cells. Doctors could then treat those cells and possibly cure the cancer while still in a very early stage. (Click here for a link to the study).
The Circulating Cell-free Genome Atlas (CCGA) study, sponsored by and known as GRAIL, will compare cell-free DNA profiles in people with cancer and in healthy non-cancer people. The study will use GRAIL’s “high-intensity” (ultra-broad and ultra-deep) sequencing approach.
The CCGA study has been underway at several leading community and academic medical centers, including OHC here in the Cincinnati area. These centers will collect blood and tissue samples from patients recently diagnosed with cancer, and blood samples from healthy individuals. In its first phase, the CCGA study will enroll and analyze samples from 10,000 study participants. GRAIL and its advisors believe that studies enrolling tens of thousands of people will be needed to identify the patterns required to detect many types of cancer. To confirm clinical validity and utility of these tests, studies enrolling hundreds of thousands of people will be needed.
“We are very pleased to be working with GRAIL and other collaborators on this landmark study and we have already begun enrolling study participants across our broad network of cancer centers and hospitals in the U.S.,” said David M. Waterhouse, MD, MPH, Co-Chair, Department of Clinical Research, OHC. “Detecting cancer at an earlier stage when it can be cured is an ambitious goal with the potential for immeasurable benefit to society. We are proud to join the Cleveland Clinic as the sites in Ohio who are participating in this initiative.”
“Cancer is an incredibly complex and heterogeneous disease, making accurate, early-stage detection extremely difficult,” said Brian Druker, M.D., Director, Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University; JELD-WEN Chair of Leukemia Research; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and a member of GRAIL’s Scientific Advisory Board. “The oncology field needs the expertise and resources to build the technology infrastructure to collect, analyze, categorize and use vast amounts of data. The CCGA study represents a critically important step in establishing this foundational knowledge.”
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Sources: Grail, Inc., GlobeNewswire
