Analysis from TRACERx Study Reveals More Sensitive and Earlier ctDNA Detection in Lung Cancer Patients by Personalis' MRD Technology

Personalis, Inc. (Nasdaq: PSNL), a leader in precision oncology, today announced the presentation of initial findings from its work with the groundbreaking TRACERx lung cancer study, marking a substantial advancement in lung cancer circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) detection and management. The Personalis NeXT Personal cancer assay, created to detect and monitor residual and recurrent disease (MRD), demonstrated significantly improved detection rates for early-stage lung cancer, including lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD), one of the most common and challenging subtypes of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) to identify in blood samples.

The findings come from an analysis by Professor Charles Swanton, Dr. James Black, and other members of the TRACERx consortium, renowned for their work on the complexities of cancer genomics. The findings were presented by Dr. Black at the 2023 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress on October 21 in Madrid, Spain, and are the first publicly presented results from Personalis’ collaboration with Cancer Research UK’s Cancer Research Horizons, University College London (UCL), and the Francis Crick Institute.

Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in the U.S., with an estimated 238,000 new cases and approximately 127,000 deaths forecasted for 2023. The current standard of care for relapse detection of NSCLC, the most common type of lung cancer, is primarily focused on imaging modalities such as CT scans, which are known to be limited in sensitivity. This ongoing collaboration is focused on addressing this challenge through advanced ctDNA analysis. For the current analysis, the teams used NeXT Personal to identify and track MRD in over 170 patients from the TRACERx cohort.

Higher sensitivity for early-stage lung cancer

In this analysis, NeXT Personal showed significantly higher sensitivity in early-stage NSCLC patients compared to two previous publications on the TRACERx cohort. Pre-surgery, the assay demonstrated 100% sensitivity for ctDNA in pre-surgical non-LUAD samples and 81% pre-surgical ctDNA sensitivity for LUAD, one of the most common types of lung cancer but also one of the most challenging to detect in blood. The pre-surgical sensitivity for early-stage LUAD was up to 4X higher than in previous studies on the TRACERx cohort, depending on stage. This high sensitivity enhanced the assay’s ability to detect recurrence and monitor lung cancer effectively.