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news.A clinical trial conducted by Canadian cancer diagnostics company Perceptronix has demonstrated that cells scraped from the inner part of the cheek may contain information that could identify whether a patient has lung cancer.
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The finding may support cheek cell analysis as a simple and inexpensive early screening method for patients at risk of the disease.
The company analyzed randomized cheek scrapings of 150 confirmed lung cancer patients and 990 high-risk patients using the Automated Quantitative Cytometry (AQC) system, which analyzes several thousand cells per specimen and reduces the data to a single score that predicts the likelihood of the presence of cancer.
Of the buccal specimens collected, the AQC showed 66% sensitivity at 70% specificity overall, and 61 percent sensitivity for stage I lung cancer, which comprised 47 of the 150 cases.
“Stage I lung cancer is considered treatable, but most lung cancers are currently detected beyond stage I,” said Dr Turic, lead researcher, and director of clinical and regulatory affairs, Perceptronix. “We believe that early detection is the key to reducing lung cancer mortality and have focused our approach around detecting stage I lung cancer.”