Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Toshiba device tests cancer types from a drop of blood

japantimes.co.jp

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 101 posts

Re: Toshiba device tests cancer types from a drop of blood

#51

Post by zxcmx »

nugget wrote: post #46
refurb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. And some of those follow on tests could be quite invasive and risky in their own right. With that kind of false positive rate, you'd be risking the life of a not insignificant number of people. Either that or driving up healthcare costs significantly as those 5000 people are going to need an MRI or CAT scan or something else to rule out cancer.

What follow on test for suspected lung cancer would risk the life of a not insignificant number of people? An MRI without contrast has no impact. An MRI with contrast has relatively little impact. A biopsy would only be done if the MRI with contrast lit up areas of concern. At the point a PET is ordered, you have narrowed the false positive pool substantially and probably want the scan no matter what.

Just telling millions of people per year they might have cancer... say the MRI is booked for 2 weeks out... which they are then going to majorly stress about the whole time regardless of how low you tell them the risk is - is going to have some crazy societal impact.

Re: Toshiba device tests cancer types from a drop of blood

#52

Post by gourneau »

Guardant Health person here riding this top comment :) If you want to work in the cancer detection space, we have 100ish open positions.

My team is looking for Python, Security, DevOps, k8s folks. https://guardanthealth.com/careers/jobs/

jgourneau@guardanthealth.com

Re: Toshiba device tests cancer types from a drop of blood

#53

Post by yorwba »

gourneau wrote: post #52

Guardant Health person here riding this top comment :) If you want to work in the cancer detection space, we have 100ish open positions. My team is looking for Python, Security, DevOps, k8s folks. https://guardanthealth.com/careers/jobs/ jgourneau@guardanthealth.com

You should save the job ads for the whoishiring thread next week. You definitely shouldn't attach an off-topic comment as a reply to the top comment.

Re: Toshiba device tests cancer types from a drop of blood

#54

Post by cactus2093 »

_Microft wrote: post #19
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's very cheap, fast and convenient, then it's enough for at least screen the population regularly. Catching only part of the cancers is quite nice already.

No, not necessarily. Check out these numbers: Sensitivity is what fraction of the affected people are actually found. Here: 90%, so 10% are missed. Specificity is what fraction of the unaffected people are detected as such. Here: 95%, so 5% wrongly detected ("false positives"). In Europe, there are 60 cases of lung cancer per 100 000 people. That makes 54 correctly detected per 100 000, missing 6 cases. That also mea…

Even though those false positive rates are high, I don't think that in itself is enough reason to dismiss the idea.

You'll still be able to identify a pool of people that as a group will develop this cancer at a rate 20x above the normal population. That still seems like a big deal, for instsance if I discovered I had a genetic factor that made me 20x more likely to get a particular cancer I think I would want to be tested for it out of precaution. This seems like the same thing.

(Now if the only further test you can do is itself super invasive or risky, that obviously has to be weighed into the decision too).

Re: Toshiba device tests cancer types from a drop of blood

#55

Post by redblacktree »

cactus2093 wrote: post #54
_Microft wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not necessarily. Check out these numbers: Sensitivity is what fraction of the affected people are actually found. Here: 90%, so 10% are missed. Specificity is what fraction of the unaffected people are detected as such. Here: 95%, so 5% wrongly detected ("false positives"). In Europe, there are 60 cases of lung cancer per 100 000 people. That makes 54 correctly detected per 100 000, missing 6 cases. That also mea…

Even though those false positive rates are high, I don't think that in itself is enough reason to dismiss the idea. You'll still be able to identify a pool of people that as a group will develop this cancer at a rate 20x above the normal population. That still seems like a big deal, for instsance if I discovered I had a genetic factor that made me 20x more likely to get a particular cancer I think I would want to be…

It's kind of silly to argue from first principles when you can ask the people who study this stuff, epidemiologists. 90% detection and 95% specificity would be horrible numbers if you asked any of them.

Re: Toshiba device tests cancer types from a drop of blood

#56

Post by drderidder »

dannykwells wrote: post #40

Not even in trials yet. GRAIL is running a 100K person trial, to read out next year. Also, not one paper showing this kind of prediction in the clinic, which GRAIL, freenome, Guardant etc all have. No meaningful papers published + huge claims +single drop of blood = TheranosII

Don't confuse a US-centric view of medical technology development, western medical journals, US trials etc with something developed in Japan. This is Toshiba, working with the (Japanese) National Cancer Center Research Institute and you can be sure there's extensive research behind it, even if it's in Japanese.

Re: Toshiba device tests cancer types from a drop of blood

#57

Post by earlbellinger »

This is very exciting. I worked on these kinds of technologies a bit in graduate school (before switching gears completely and getting a PhD in astrophysics). In the coming decades, we will be able to detect who is on the path to disease before they ever begin showing any symptoms at all. Granted, curing these diseases post-detection is a whole different matter.

Re: Toshiba device tests cancer types from a drop of blood

#58

Post by tidenly »

beenBoutIT wrote: post #18
projektfu wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ouch. Give me a needle please.

The finger prick is an interesting non-sexual way to positively identify masochists. Everything about the finger prick takes away control while maximizing pain. A nurse can't/won't give you an arm jab until you relax your arm but they'll detonate a finger jabber randomly with an audible 'snap' while you're helplessly watching it all happen in front of you.

I haven't laughed at a post this hard in ages. thanks.

Re: Toshiba device tests cancer types from a drop of blood

#59

Post by epmaybe »

pkaye wrote: post #3

Elsewhere it was mentioned it was 90% sensitivity and 95% selectivity which is not that good enough for something serious as cancer. Hopefully they can improve on it.

What's the current sensitivity of current screening modalities at the stage that these blood tests can be used? Apologies is this is answered elsewhere in this thread.

Re: Toshiba device tests cancer types from a drop of blood

#60

Post by refurb »

nugget wrote: post #46
refurb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. And some of those follow on tests could be quite invasive and risky in their own right. With that kind of false positive rate, you'd be risking the life of a not insignificant number of people. Either that or driving up healthcare costs significantly as those 5000 people are going to need an MRI or CAT scan or something else to rule out cancer.

What follow on test for suspected lung cancer would risk the life of a not insignificant number of people? An MRI without contrast has no impact. An MRI with contrast has relatively little impact. A biopsy would only be done if the MRI with contrast lit up areas of concern. At the point a PET is ordered, you have narrowed the false positive pool substantially and probably want the scan no matter what.

Not only the risk of contrast agents, but possible sedation or just plain medical errors.

It might only be 1 or 2 people out of 5,000, but those 5,000 were perfectly healthy and never had cancer to start with.

Post reply on HN