Exact Sciences Corp. (Nasdaq: EXAS), a leading provider of cancer screening and diagnostic tests, today announced data from a multi-cancer early detection (MCED) biomarker validation study was presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress. The study rigorously assessed the performance of four distinct biomarker classes found in the blood and known to signal the presence of cancer regardless of its location in the body.

“Cancer releases a diverse set of biomarkers into the blood that can be harnessed to detect the devastating disease at earlier stages,” said Tom Beer, M.D., F.A.C.P., chief medical officer and vice president, multi-cancer early detection, Exact Sciences. “These data demonstrate in a large, well-designed case-control study that combining different cancer biomarkers improves cancer detection, especially in stages I and II, when treatment may be more effective for patients. This is a major step forward in our mission to detect cancer earlier before signs and symptoms appear.”

Four biomarker classes, discovered through years of collaboration with Johns Hopkins and Mayo Clinic and analyzed together for the first time in this study, demonstrated the ability to detect cancer signal from 15 organ sites with a mean sensitivity of 61% and mean specificity of 98.2%. The multi-biomarker approach, including aneuploidy, proteins, and DNA methylation and mutations, provided encouraging cancer detection in stages I and II, with a combined sensitivity of 38.7%.

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