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Toshiba device tests cancer types from a drop of blood

japantimes.co.jp

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

#91

Post by feikname »

ak217 wrote: post #71
drderidder wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you please post links to the research that you mention?

"Planned for details of the technology will be announced at the "42nd Japan Annual Meeting of the Molecular Biology Society[5]" to be held in Fukuoka on December 3 to 8 days."[0][1]

[0] https://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1220546.html

The overview can be read in the following links: (all in japanese):

Toshiba announcement[1], National Cancer Center Japan[2][3], Nedo[4]

[1] https://www.toshiba.co.jp/rdc/detail/1911_06.htm

[2] https://www.ncc.go.jp/jp/information/pr_release/2014/0613/in...

[3] https://www.ncc.go.jp/jp/information/pr_release/2014/0613/pr...

[4] https://www.nedo.go.jp/news/press/AA5_100275.html

[5] https://www2.aeplan.co.jp/mbsj2019/

Also, here's the information regarding the project's funding and about the objective: https://research-er.jp/projects/view/920250 and https://www.nedo.go.jp/activities/ZZJP_100082.html

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

#92

Post by chrisweekly »

robbiep wrote: post #69
nugget wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Quite rare to jump straight to an MRI - a chest MRI is a half hour deal. More common to do a CT Chest which has a 1:500 risk of causing cancer

"1:500 risk" - citation?

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

#93

Post by rdlecler1 »

hermitdev wrote: post #68
zxcmx wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I typically have several MRIs per year. I'm not claustrophobic and don't stress about them, but sometimes MRIs cause me physical discomfort, even without contrast. With contrast, its slightly worse, it seems. I think its related to a genetic disorder that causes me to retain high levels of iron, but I have nothing to back this up. This discomfort in the MRI comes in the form of waves of warmth I feel throughout my ab…

My father has hemochromatosis which causes high iron uptake. He didn’t discover this until his fifties and it’s like he has rust in his joints. I did 23andMe and I only have one allele so I don’t have it. If you suspect you do, a dna rest will tell you. Please get that checked out. You can deal with it if it’s early in your life.

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

#94

Post by sambe »

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.

It doesn't have to instantly and directly kill somebody to be bad in aggregate.

This kind of analysis has been done, most memorably for breast cancer screening. The conclusion I recall was that it did more harm than good a few years ago (opportunity cost of unnecessary spending, pain and complications of biopsy, unnecessary mastectomy, psychological damage, etc. etc.). The follow-up tests and analysis also have an error rate and no treatment is zero cost.

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

#95

Post by rapunkill »

_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…

It's probably not as simple as I think it is but if the test is cheap enough couldn't they just run it again on all affected people just in case?

If ran twice we'd have: 49 correctly detected, missing 11 cases and 250 incorrectly suspected.

Ran thrice keeping the 2 most similar results we'd have: Most people correctly identified?

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

#96

Post by josalhor »

rapunkill wrote: post #95
_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…

It's probably not as simple as I think it is but if the test is cheap enough couldn't they just run it again on all affected people just in case? If ran twice we'd have: 49 correctly detected, missing 11 cases and 250 incorrectly suspected. Ran thrice keeping the 2 most similar results we'd have: Most people correctly identified?

That would decrease the amount of people correctly identified. And you're also under the assumption that the misclassification of people is a random phenomenon. In the real world that wouldn't be the case and some type of blood may get misclassified all the time by the system.

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

#97

Post by ak217 »

feikname wrote: post #91
ak217 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please post links to the research that you mention?

"Planned for details of the technology will be announced at the "42nd Japan Annual Meeting of the Molecular Biology Society[5]" to be held in Fukuoka on December 3 to 8 days."[0][1] [0] https://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1220546.html The overview can be read in the following links: (all in japanese): Toshiba announcement[1], National Cancer Center Japan[2][3], Nedo[4] [1] https://www.toshiba.co.jp/rdc/detail/19…

Thanks. None of these are peer-reviewed articles or scientific conference presentations (although it will be great to see what comes out of the meeting).

The original poster was pointing out that this is, so far, vaporware because Toshiba has not presented any actual scientific results, unlike Grail, Guardiant and others. Everything seen on this so far is just marketing (all of the scientific literature links on Toshiba's website are to cancer epidemiology surveys, not articles about this technology). The parent poster has yet to back up their assertion that there is "extensive research" behind it. I've been unable to find any publications or patent applications on this, so I'm very interested if someone has links.

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

#100

Post by robbiep »

chrisweekly wrote: post #92
robbiep wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite rare to jump straight to an MRI - a chest MRI is a half hour deal. More common to do a CT Chest which has a 1:500 risk of causing cancer

"1:500 risk" - citation?

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/do-ct-scans-c...

Looks like I may have been misrepresenting the risk to some patients; also looks like i've probably caused around 4 cases of cancer

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