NuQ Blood Test Accurately Detects Lung Cancers

By LabMedica International staff writers
Posted on 06 Dec 2015

Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in men and women, with around 220,000 new cases diagnosed each year and 158,000 deaths in the USA alone and lung cancers are the leading cause of cancer-related death in that country.

While there are several types of lung cancer, Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) represents about 80% of those detected and typically, symptoms of lung cancer do not appear until the disease is already in an advanced stage, and they can be confused with others conditions.

Image: Schematic diagram of a nucleosome which is a section of DNA that is wrapped around a core of proteins and the basis for the NuQ biomarker assays (Photo courtesy of VolitionRx Limited).

Physicians at Liege University Hospital (Belgium) are conducting a clinical study as part of an ongoing larger prospective study of 240 subjects. The results were the outcome of an interim analysis of the first subjects recruited; including 29 subjects diagnosed with NSCLC, 22 diagnosed with another pulmonary disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and 22 with healthy lungs.

The analysis of the study revealed that, when combined with details of smoking history, a panel of four NuQ biomarker assays (VolitionRx Limited; Namur, Belgium), detected 27 of 29 (93%) of lung cancer cases, with 91% specificity due to 2 false positive results among 22 healthy subjects. Nucleosomics is the platform technology to measure and identify signatures of nucleosomes circulating in the blood, which is the basis of the NuQ biomarker assays. VolitionRx expects to make full results of this ongoing lung cancer study available in 2016, as well as the results of another 600-subject lung cancer study conducted with the University Hospital Bonn (Germany).

Jake Micallef, PhD, MBA, VolitionRx Chief Scientific Officer, said, “The NuQ blood test not only differentiates lung cancer from healthy subjects but also from the common lung disease, COPD, which is related to tobacco consumption. The best current test for lung cancer is a scan that has high accuracy but does not distinguish well between cancerous and non-cancerous fibrous nodules in the lung, leading to a high false positive rate. Our interim data are exciting because they show both high sensitivity and very few false positives, indicating that a simple NuQ blood test used alone or in conjunction with current standards may detect lung cancer and distinguish it from other lung diseases.”

Related Links:
Liege University Hospital
VolitionRx Limited
University Hospital Bonn