{"entity":{"id":"thromboseq","kind":"drug","name":"thromboSeq (tumour-educated platelet RNA)","aka":[],"tldr":"An Amsterdam research test that reads RNA inside blood platelets and detected 18 cancer types in a laboratory study, though it often flagged people with other illnesses.","summary":"In In 't Veld et al. (Cancer Cell 2022), thromboSeq detected cancer in two-thirds of 1,096 samples from patients with stage I to IV cancer and half of 352 stage I to III tumours at 99% specificity in asymptomatic controls; in symptomatic controls with inflammatory or cardiovascular disease or benign tumours specificity averaged 78%. It predicted the tumour site correctly in over 80% for five tumour types. It is a research assay at Amsterdam UMC with no regulatory status.","status":"emerging","asOf":"2026-10-29","links":[{"label":"In 't Veld et al., Cancer Cell 2022","url":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ccell.2022.08.006"}],"tags":["test","mced","evidence:insufficient"],"related":[],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":["mced","liquid-biopsy","rna-seq"],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":["amsterdam-umc"],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":["paper-thromboseq-cancer-cell-2022"],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":["Evidence grade insufficient for the claim that taking this test reduces late-stage diagnosis or cancer deaths: no randomised trial of it has reported either outcome, and its published performance comes from case-control or single-arm studies. The only randomised result for any multi-cancer test, NHS-Galleri, did not show fewer stage III or IV cancers.","What a result means: a positive result is a reason for further tests, not a diagnosis; a negative result does not rule cancer out and does not replace the screening tests that have been shown to work (bowel, breast, cervical and, where eligible, lung screening)."],"brand":"thromboSeq","modality":"Multi-cancer blood test, academic research assay (platelet RNA sequencing)","mechanism":"Sequences the RNA carried by blood platelets, which changes as platelets pass through and are signalled by tumours; machine learning detects cancer and predicts its site.","approvals":[],"mechanismSteps":[],"toxicity":[],"access":[],"regulatoryEvents":[]},"route":"/drugs/thromboseq/","neighbours":{"technology":[{"id":"liquid-biopsy","kind":"technology","name":"Liquid biopsy (ctDNA)","route":"/technologies/liquid-biopsy/"},{"id":"mced","kind":"technology","name":"Multi-cancer early detection (MCED)","route":"/technologies/mced/"},{"id":"rna-seq","kind":"technology","name":"RNA sequencing & expression profiling","route":"/technologies/rna-seq/"}],"institution":[{"id":"amsterdam-umc","kind":"institution","name":"Amsterdam UMC / Cancer Center Amsterdam","route":"/institutions/amsterdam-umc/"}],"paper":[{"id":"paper-thromboseq-cancer-cell-2022","kind":"paper","name":"Detection and localization of early- and late-stage cancers using platelet RNA","route":"/key-papers/paper-thromboseq-cancer-cell-2022/"}]}}