Summary from SPOT-MAS leading research author at 2023 ASCO Breakthrough Press conference
Thursday, August 3, 2023.
Yokohama, Japan.
The press conference on 03 August highlighted the first day of 2023 ASCO Breakthrough meeting in Yokohama. The American Society of Clinical Oncologoy (ASCO) meetings serve as leading education events for sharing knowledge and Asco Breakthrough is the premier scientific and educational event outside the United States.
2023 ASCO Breakthrough in Yokohama, Japan
Dr. Julie Gralow, ASCO Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President moderated the media roundatable with 04 study authors from Japan, China, Australia and Vietnam.
Dr. Le Son Tran, Medical Genetics Institute; Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam shared with the press about the liquid biospy SPOT-MAS assay.
Press conference Aug 03, 2023.
Moderator: What prompted you to conduct this study?
“Early cancer detection can can improve the opportunity to control cancer progression and patient survival rate. Current screening tests in the guideline have reduced mortality. However, most of them test for a single type of cancer and involves separate appointments and procedures. Some of them are invasive, which has low accessibility. To overcome such clinical challenges, We previously developed a liquid biopsy-based assay, known as SPOT-MAS, to detect five commonly diagnosed cancers in Vietnam, including liver, breast, colorectal, gastric, and lung cancer.”
“At this year ASCO breakthrough meeting, we are excited to share the results of our clinical study, namely K-DETEK. K-DETEK is a multi-center prospective study aiming to assess the feasibility and detection value of SPOT-MAS in an asymptomatic population.”
Dr. Le Son Tran sharing at 2023 ASCO Breakthrough media roundtable.
Moderator: Can you summarize the key findings of the study?
“We have recruited 10,000 asymptomatic individuals across Vietnam. So far, we have completed our analysis for 2,795 cases and demonstrated that SPOT-MAS can detect cancers in asymptomatic individuals with a positive predictive value (PPV) of 60%. Beyond detecting cancer signal, our test could identify the tumor location with an accuracy of 83.3%. This is important for clinicians to directs patients to appropriate follow-up diagnostic tests and necessary treatment.”
Moderator: Why is this important? How might the findings of your study impact the field more broadly?
“Our study provides clinical evidence for the applicability of SPOT-MAS, a multi-cancer screening test as a complementary method in the standard of care for early cancer screening.
We expect that the implementation of this test would improve the accessibility and affordability in low and middle income countries, like in some South-East Asian countries where a national screening programme is urgently needed but not yet available.”
Media question: Multi-cancer detection tests are being developed in many countries, including Japan. How is your test different from others?
Media question
“Different research groups analyse different ctDNA signatures for detecting cancer. However, the challenge in the field is that the amount of ctDNA in the blood is extremely low especially in early stage cancers. The unique feature of SPOT-MAS technology incorporated multiple signatures of ctDNA to achieve high detection sensitivity while reducing sequencing depth. By doing so, we could reduce the cost of the test, which is an important factor for a screening test to be applied at large population scale.”
The 2023 ASCO Breakthrough continues today in Yokohama. Dr.Le Son Tran and fellow research partners from Medical Genetics Institute, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam will have their 03 Abstracts presented at Poster Session B.
The 2023 ASCO Breakthrough Poster Area.
Check out ASCO news related SPOT-MAS research at:
- https://ascopost.com/news/august-2023/liquid-biopsy-assay-demonstrates-effective-early-cancer-detection-in-asymptomatic-individuals-in-vietnam/
- https://www.cancer.net/blog/2023-07/2023-asco-breakthrough#k-detek
ASCO press release about the research:
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Dr. Le Son Tran – Senior Scientist at Medical Genetics Institute, Ho Chi Minh City is the leading researcher of the SPOT-MAS assay, a multimodal analysis of methylomics and fragmentomics in plasma cell-free DNA for multi-cancer early detection and localization.
The SPOT-MAS assay contributes 02 abstracts at this year ASCO Breakthrough, while another abstract of Minimal Residual Disease (MRD) “Personalized K-Track Assay to Detect Actionable Mutations and Minimal Residual Disease in Solid Tumors” from study author Dr. Lan Tu, Prinicipal Investigator (R&D) of Gene Solutions received an Abstract Award (Top 40 highest scoring abstracts submitted to the 2023 ASCO Breakthrough Meeting).
Previously, another study from Dr. Le Son Tran was also highlighted at eLife Science press release after the Reviewed Preprint “Multimodal analysis of methylomics and fragmentomics in plasma cell-free DNA for multi-cancer early detection and localization” published.
