Search

Cancer is the leading cause of death in dogs, yet there are no established screening paradigms for early detection. Liquid biopsy methods that interrogate cancer-derived genomic alterations in cell-free DNA in blood are being adopted for multi-cancer early detection in human medicine and are now available for veterinary use. The CANcer Detection in Dogs (CANDiD) study is an international, multi-center clinical study designed to validate the performance of a novel multi-cancer early detection "liquid biopsy" test developed for noninvasive detection and characterization of cancer in dogs using next-generation sequencing (NGS) of blood-derived DNA; study results are reported here. In total, 1,358 cancer-diagnosed and presumably cancer-free dogs were enrolled in the study, representing the range of breeds, weights, ages, and cancer types seen in routine clinical practice; 1,100 subjects met inclusion criteria for analysis and were used in the validation of the test. Overall, the liquid biopsy test demonstrated a 54.7% (95% CI: 49.3–60.0%) sensitivity and a 98.5% (95% CI: 97.0–99.3%) specificity. For three of the most aggressive canine cancers (lymphoma, hemangiosarcoma, osteosarcoma), the detection rate was 85.4% (95% CI: 78.4–90.9%); and for eight of the most common canine cancers (lymphoma, hemangiosarcoma, osteosarcoma, soft tissue sarcoma, mast cell tumor, mammary gland carcinoma, anal sac adenocarcinoma, malignant melanoma), the detection rate was 61.9% (95% CI: 55.3–68.1%). The test detected cancer signal in patients representing 30 distinct cancer types and provided a Cancer Signal Origin prediction for a subset of patients with hematological malignancies. Furthermore, the test accurately detected cancer signal in four presumably cancer-free subjects before the onset of clinical signs, further supporting the utility of liquid biopsy as an early detection test. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that NGS-based liquid biopsy can offer a novel option for noninvasive multi-cancer detection in dogs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the impact of rare variants is essential to understanding human health. We analyze rare (MAF < 0.1%) variants against 4264 phenotypes in 49,960 exome-sequenced individuals from the UK Biobank and 1934 phenotypes (1821 overlapping with UK Biobank) in 21,866 members of the Healthy Nevada Project (HNP) cohort who underwent Exome + sequencing at Helix. After using our rare-variant-tailored methodology to reduce test statistic inflation, we identify 64 statistically significant gene-based associations in our meta-analysis of the two cohorts and 37 for phenotypes available in only one cohort. Singletons make significant contributions to our results, and the vast majority of the associations could not have been identified with a genotyping chip. Our results are available for interactive browsing in a webapp (https://ukb.research.helix.com). This comprehensive analysis illustrates the biological value of large, deeply phenotyped cohorts of unselected populations coupled with NGS data. Population-based association analyses of rare genetic variants with complex traits are limited by the availability of data from sufficiently large cohorts. Here, Cirulli et al. report gene-based collapsing analysis of exomes from 49,960 participants of the UK Biobank and 21,866 participants of the Healthy Nevada Project over a total of 4377 traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]