Clinical-stage genomic diagnostics · Nevada, USA
Most cancers have no screening test at all.
Screening today is built organ by organ a mammogram for breast, a colonoscopy for colon, a scan for the lungs. Everything else is usually found once someone already feels ill. EarlySignal is developing a blood test intended to look for more than fifty cancers at once, from a single draw.
Background methylation
Coherent cancer signal
Illustrative — not measured data
The gap
Five cancers are screened for. The rest are not.
United States guidelines recommend population screening for a short list of cancers. Several of the most lethal — pancreatic, ovarian, oesophageal, liver — have no recommended screening pathway for people at average risk, which is one reason so many are found late.
Recommended population screening
Single-organ tests, one at a time
Breast
Mammography
Colon and rectum
Colonoscopy / stool
Cervix
Cytology / HPV
Prostate
PSA, shared decision
Lung
Low-dose CT, high risk
No recommended screening pathway
Usually found once symptoms appear
Pancreas
Ovary
Oesophagus
Liver and bile duct
Stomach, kidney, brain, blood … and most others
Please read this alongside the list above
A blood test that looks at many cancers at once is intended to add to organ-specific screening, not replace it. Whether multi-cancer early detection improves outcomes for patients is still an open scientific question, and we set out the current state of that evidence plainly on The Test.