A simple blood test can detect head and neck cancers even 10 years before symptoms begin: Here's how

In the United States, Human papillomavirus (HPV) causes around 70% of head and neck cancers, making it the most common cancer caused by the virus. The incidence rates are climbing each year, and what makes this cancer particularly crucial is that there is no screening test for HPV-associated head and neck cancers.

So, often the patients are diagnosed only after a tumour has grown uncontrollably, causing symptoms and spreading to the lymph nodes. Early screening could significantly help the patients in terms of treatment options and also outcomes. Researchers at Mass General Brigham have now developed a test that could help identify HPV-associated head and neck cancers up to 10 years before the symptoms appear. The findings of the new study are published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.A simple blood test to detect HPV associated head and neck cancer

The researchers developed an HPV-DeepSeek test, which is a blood-based cancer detection test that could revolutionize the screening of HPV-associated head and neck cancer. The new liquid biopsy tool can catch the cancer earlier, which may lead to higher treatment success and require a less intense regimen, according to the authors.“Our study shows for the first time that we can accurately detect HPV-associated cancers in asymptomatic individuals many years before they are ever diagnosed with cancer.

By the time patients enter our clinics with symptoms of cancer, they require treatments that cause significant, life-long side effects. We hope tools like HPV-DeepSeek will allow us to catch these cancers at their very earliest stages, which ultimately can improve patient outcomes and quality of life,” Daniel L.

Faden, MD, FACS, lead author, a head and neck surgical oncologist and principal investigator in the Mike Toth Head and Neck Cancer Research Center at Mass Eye and Ear, a member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, said in a statement. How the novel test detects HPV associated with head and neck cancer

The new liquid biopsy test, HPV-DeepSeek, uses whole-genome sequencing to detect microscopic fragments of HPV DNA that have broken off from a tumor and entered the bloodstream. Their previous research confirmed that the test had 99% specificity and 99% sensitivity for diagnosing cancer at the first time of presentation to a clinic. The new test outperformed all the current testing methods.

To further look at the efficacy of the HPV-DeepSeek in detecting HPV-associated head and neck cancer long before diagnosis, the researchers tested 56 samples from the Mass General Brigham Biobank.

28 of these samples were collected from people who went on to develop HPV-associated head and neck cancer years later, and 28 from healthy individuals.

The new test detected HPV tumor DNA in 22 out of 28 blood samples from patients who later developed the cancer. Also, the 28 control samples (collected from healthy individuals) tested negative. These confirm the highly specific results from the test. The earliest possible HPV DNA detection from the blood samples was 7.8 years before diagnosis!The researchers also improved the test’s power using machine learning, so that it accurately identified 27 out of 28 cancer cases, including samples collected up to 10 years before diagnosis.