Joint Study Aims To Use Simple Blood Test To Detect Lung Cancer

Moffitt Cancer Center has joined forces with Cizzle Biotechnology to advance early-stage lung cancer detection. The UK diagnostics company has been focused identifying a new lung cancer biomarker, CIZ1B, through a simple blood sample.  

Biomarker testing can be used to look at a patient’s tissue, blood or other bodily fluid to see if certain molecules, proteins or genes could be a sign of a disease like cancer. Biomarkers can also be used to evaluate the effectiveness of certain treatments.

A total of 250 patients with identified lung nodules will be enrolled in the study. Their initial blood sample will be sent to laboratories at the University of York for researchers to analyze. They will then be followed for three years. So far, 75 patients are enrolled.

Lary Robinson, MD 

Currently, the only way to detect lung cancer early is with low-dose screening chest CT scans for those considered high risk.

“Development of a highly accurate blood biomarker for the discovery of early-stage lung cancer would be a tremendous advancement and would be far easier to implement in the routine clinical setting,” said Lary Robinson, MD, director of Moffitt’s Lung Cancer Early Detection Center. “Even with chest CT scans, at least 25% of patients will be found to have a lung nodule. Most of these are false positive results requiring careful evaluation, often invasive tests and long-term follow-ups.”

According to Robinson, there are multiple benefits to an accurate blood test like this. “It can aid in determining whether an indeterminant lung nodule found on a CT scan is cancer,” he said. “It can also be used for periodic long-term surveillance for recurrent lung cancer or second primary lung cancer for patients who have had curative lung cancer treatment.”