Scoring system for accurate and less invasive cancer diagnostics
- January 14, 2020
iHealthtech Director Prof Lim Chwee Teck and his research team developed a scoring system called Tumour Matrisome Index (TMI) to diagnose lung cancer and how well a patient might respond to treatment.
TMI is a panel of 29 genes that appeared consistently in patients diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) which accounts for 85% of all lung cancers. The system can be used together with liquid biopsy, a blood test for cancer, which is less invasive and less painful than conventional tumour biopsies.
Currently TMI focuses on lung cancer but the team is working to validate the use of TMI for other cancer types.
“Different cancer types have different ways of forming tumours. As such, the protein expression in the tumour can vary from one cancer type to another. This can lead to differences in TMI scores for the different cancer types,” Prof Lim explained.
The system is useful not only for predicting treatment response but can also help to identify molecular targets for future drug development.
Please click the link below for the research articles:
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/36/17957
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41698-019-0087-0
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