Domestic medical personnel have developed and confirmed the effectiveness of a liquid biopsy method that can diagnose the recurrence of ovarian cancer (photo provided by Yonsei University Health System).
A method has been developed to diagnose recurrent ovarian cancer through blood biopsy.
The research team, including Professor Seungtae Lee from the Department of Laboratory Medicine at Yonsei University College of Medicine, Professor Jeongyoon Lee and Yuna Kim from the Gynecological Cancer Center at Yonsei Cancer Hospital, and Jinho Heo, Department of Laboratory Medicine , National Health Insurance Service Ilsan Hospital, developed a liquid biopsy method that can diagnose the recurrence of ovarian cancer and confirmed its effectiveness. On the 23rd, it was announced that it had been performed.
Predicting recurrence is important because ovarian cancer has frequent recurrences when it reaches later stages, and as recurrences continue, resistance develops and treatment becomes more difficult. The recurrence rate of early-stage ovarian cancer is 25%, while the late-stage recurrence rate is up to 80%.
Currently, to detect the recurrence of ovarian cancer, the level of “CA-125 protein” is examined through a blood test. CA-125 is a biomarker often found in ovarian cancer patients, but its level increases due to pregnancy and uterine inflammation, hence its specificity, which refers to the likelihood of a negative test in a person without cancer, she is low.
The research team developed a next-generation sequencing (NGS) panel that allows liquid biopsy with a small amount of blood and analyzed its effectiveness in real patients. Liquid biopsy is a method of cancer diagnosis that is a step up from tissue biopsy, which involves removing organ tissue and diagnosing cancer under a microscope.
The research team used cancer fragment genes (ctDNA, circulating tumor nucleic acid) floating in the patient’s blood to create a panel capable of detecting genetic mutations such as TP53, BRCA1, BRCA2 and ARID1A, which are frequently found in cancer ovarian. This has the advantage of reducing testing costs by modifying the target gene.
The research team then confirmed the panel’s effectiveness using next-generation sequencing (NGS) on 201 patients with ovarian cancer and 95 patients with benign tumors. Tests were conducted every three months starting from diagnosis or surgery.
As a result of the study, genetic mutations were observed in 70% of ovarian cancer patients using the panel. In contrast, no pathogenic mutations were detected in patients with benign tumors, recording a test specificity of 100%.
Even if a tumor mutation was detected in the initial test, the rate of stopping cancer progression in cases where the mutation was not detected in the test six months after treatment was as high as 70%. On the other hand, when mutations were detected even after 6 months of treatment, the percentage of ovarian cancer patients progressing to recurrence was 90%.
The research team’s testing method was able to detect ovarian cancer recurrence approximately three months earlier than the existing CA-125 test. The panel used in this study targets the genetic mutations that cause ovarian cancer and can diagnose minimal residual disease more quickly and sensitively than existing tests.
Professor Lee said: “The advantage of this study is that we have confirmed the effectiveness of liquid biopsy by securing approximately 300 patients with ovarian cancer and benign tumors” and added: “We will continue follow-up research so that it can be used in real clinical trials”.
The results of this study were published in the international academic journal “Cancer Research”.
