Toshiba device tests cancer types from a drop of blood

[pkaye]

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.

[frickinLasers]

Medical tests are always going to be messy, because biology is messy. It's ultimately up to the physician to order tests and interpret the results. Here's a list of tests for diagnosing breast cancer, none of which approach the numbers you are hoping for (a needle biopsy is only performed once a mass is found)

http://www.getthediagnosis.org/diagnosis/Breast_Cancer.htm

I just stumbled across this site, but you can browse by diagnosis for more numbers.

http://www.getthediagnosis.org/browse.php?mode=dx

[BiteCode_dev]

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.

[jolmg]

Does that translate to 5-10% chance of false-negative? Can't that be improved simply by having multiple tests with a few more drops of blood?

[epmaybe]

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.

[pen2l]

Here's one paper I've found by quoted researcher, which I think is kind of relevant to the device/what this article is about: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30734558

I think they are creating microfluidic chips that analyze miRNAs. So, I imagine it's an orchestra of pumps, valves, etc pushing very very small amounts of liquid around and using an array of techniques to detect things, all dictated by microcontrollers. It's as interdisciplinary as you can get!

It should be noted that these papers are actually in great abundance, when I get happy is when a big company (e.g. Toshiba or Olympus) takes over because it means a return is to be made, i.e. they're going to pay for the patents and finally bring academic papers to fruition, and putting their weight behind it, probably make it work to solve problems like "cancer" (by detecting it super-early, making it easier to take out).

[gewa]

That’s the important point here. RNA analysis by chips or sequencing is nothing new. But there’s always a long way from the lab to the clinic, and its capital intensive to fund a startup in this field.

[buboard]

They should name it Notheranos

[saas_sam]

Therayes

[dannykwells]

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

[drderidder]

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.

[hliyan]

This is part of the damage Theranos has done. Even when a legitimate advance comes along in the same field, people are reluctant to believe it because of the hype that Theranos created.

[segfaultbuserr]

Jokes aside, my understanding is that diagnosing diseases using a drop of blood was once a promising and legitimate application of microfluidic & lab-on-a-chip technology and many believed it was the future. The problem of Theranos was that the company was being completely delusional about its serious limitations, and now everything that involves "a drop of blood" has a bad name afterwards.

Is there anyone who work in the related area of research? Could you give us an overview of the actual progress of the technology today? What can the technology do today? And what is the limitations?

[stonewhite]

A future iteration of this product should be a household item that you use it during your morning routine, even before brushing your teeth. Preventative measures like this should be more widely available and built into peoples everyday routines.

[Gatsky]

Ah, we are getting ahead of ourselves. This isn't a preventative measure. It is a diagnostic device. The distinction is important because what will become increasingly apparent is we don't have good tools to deal with cancer when it is detected very early. One of the major problems is working out which of these 'detection events' is going to progress into clinically meaningful disease. We can't just take out (or even biopsy) the prostate of everyone with a hit.

[neuronic]

Wait a second. That HEAVILY depends on the different aspects of detection here. For starters, mammography is not performed every year for women at any age. Why?

First, you need near perfect results on 1) false AND true positives and 2) false AND true negatives. Otherwise statistics will screw your results over hard. [1]

Second, the benefits need to outweigh the issues with invasive testing (taking your blood every day, 365 days, for XX years is bound to introduce some risk of infection etc...).

[1] https://www.cancer.org/cancer/breast-cancer/screening-tests-...

[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.

[PeterisP]

It's kind of what Theranos promised but didn't deliver?

[phire]

I don't think so.

Theranos wanted to do any and all blood tests from a single drop of blood. Toshiba is limiting themselves to just a single kind of test, which I'm guessing the science agrees is possible with such a small blood sample.

[anon946]

Reliable quantitative tests, what Theranos was promising, are significantly more difficult than screening/classification tests.

[OliverJones]

This kind of device should join perpetual motion machines on the very short list in patent law where a working model is required as part of the patent application.

In its favor is the fact that no Toshiba executive will be able to distract VCs and senior statesmen the way the top Theranos executive could.

[new299]

A number of companies are working on cfDNA (cell free DNA) approaches to early cancer detection. GRAIL and Freenome are probably notable examples.

Far fewer seem to be looking at miRNA, as Toshiba are here. I know of one other in Japan with a novel approach. If any Bioinformatics people would be interested email me and I’ll introduce them, they’re hiring.

[mrinterweb]

This is great. I hope this kind of screening tech, like this, becomes commonplace and highly available. Early detection could save many lives and greatly reduce later stage treatment costs.

[tempsolution]

Wow maybe Toshiba is able to do what Theranos failed to do. And of course with their failure rate, they can bring up healthcare costs as well. Win win for everyone... cough

[s_m]

No mention of "Theranos" even once in that article.

[pbreit]

Does this suggest Theranos could have been viable?

[mchen076]

Not even remotely. These are testing for massively different things via entirely different processes.

[leog0esger]

This sounds very familiar and fishy... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Blood:_Secrets_and_Lies_in...

[euske]

It bothers me that their control screen looks like Windows XP.

[sidpatil]

That's because it is Windows XP.

[13hunteo]

Sounds familiar...

[teknologist]

It looks like it's running Windows XP.

[dafty4]

Where is the photo of the founder wearing a black turtleneck? I won't believe the results until I see that.

[yorwba]

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.

[xivzgrev]

THERANOS IS BACK!

[rco8786]

Well this sounds familiar