# CancerSEEK

Source: https://onco.cc/drugs/cancerseek/  
OnCo record `cancerseek` (Treatment). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

The Johns Hopkins blood test that first showed one draw could find several cancers and point to the organ; its approach passed to Thrive Earlier Detection and then to Exact Sciences, whose Cancerguard test followed.

## Summary

CancerSEEK was developed at Johns Hopkins. In the 2018 Science paper (Cohen et al.) it was positive in a median of 70% of 1,005 patients with eight non-metastatic cancer types, with specificity above 99% (7 of 812 healthy controls positive), and localised the cancer to a small number of sites in a median of 83% of patients. In DETECT-A (Lennon et al., Science 2020), a version of the test combined with PET-CT screened 10,006 women aged 65 to 75: 26 cancers were detected by blood testing, 1% of participants had PET-CT after a false-positive blood test and 0.22% a futile invasive procedure.

Thrive Earlier Detection, which licensed the approach, was acquired by Exact Sciences on 5 January 2021 (Exact Sciences 10-Q). Exact's ASCEND study (NCT04213326) collected samples for the test's development. The commercial successor, Cancerguard, reads DNA methylation and proteins rather than mutations and proteins, so CancerSEEK's figures do not transfer to it.

## Fields

- Kind: Treatment
- Status: historic
- Last checked: 2026-10-29
- Tags: test; mced; evidence:insufficient
- Brand: CancerSEEK
- Modality: Multi-cancer blood test (cell-free DNA mutations and proteins), research assay
- Mechanism: Mutations in 16 genes in cell-free DNA plus eight circulating proteins, combined by a classifier that also localises the likely organ.

## Notes

- Evidence grade insufficient: DETECT-A was a single-arm feasibility study with no comparison group.
- Not to be confused with Caris Life Sciences' MI Cancer Seek, an unrelated tumour profiling test.

## Sources

- Cohen et al., Science 2018: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aar3247
- Lennon et al., Science 2020 (DETECT-A): https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abb9601
- Exact Sciences 10-Q (Thrive acquisition, 5 January 2021): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1124140/000112414021000097/exas-20210930.htm

## Connected records

- drugs: [Cancerguard](https://onco.cc/drugs/cancerguard/)
- technologies: [Liquid biopsy (ctDNA)](https://onco.cc/technologies/liquid-biopsy/), [Multi-cancer early detection (MCED)](https://onco.cc/technologies/mced/), [Proteomics & phosphoproteomics](https://onco.cc/technologies/proteomics/)
- companies: [Exact Sciences (Abbott)](https://onco.cc/companies/exact-sciences/)
- institutions: [Johns Hopkins Hospital / Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center](https://onco.cc/institutions/johns-hopkins/)
- terms: [Circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA)](https://onco.cc/terms/ctdna/), [DETECT-A: a blood test plus PET-CT to screen 10,006 women with no symptoms](https://onco.cc/terms/detect-a-study/)
- trials: [ASCEND (CancerSEEK case-control collection)](https://onco.cc/trials/ascend-cancerseek/)
- people: [Bert Vogelstein](https://onco.cc/people/bert-vogelstein/), [Kenneth W. Kinzler](https://onco.cc/people/kenneth-kinzler/), [Nickolas Papadopoulos](https://onco.cc/people/nickolas-papadopoulos/)
- key papers: [DETECT-A: a blood test plus PET-CT found treatable cancers in 10,000 women with no symptoms](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-detect-a-science-2020/), [Detection and localization of surgically resectable cancers with a multi-analyte blood test](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-cohen-cancerseek-multi-analyte-blood-test-science-2018/)

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