Original from: PR Newswire

OSF HealthCare, a 16-hospital integrated health system that serves patients in Illinois and Michigan, and DELFI Diagnostics, Inc., a developer of accessible blood-based tests that deliver a new way to enhance cancer detection, today announced a collaboration to utilize DELFI's FirstLook Lung blood-based cancer screening test to help improve screening rates. DELFI's collaboration with OSF was recently highlighted by the Biden Cancer Moonshot to expand accessibility to lung cancer screening.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths both domestically and globally, and studies show that proactive annual screening can reduce death rates by 20% or more.

Through focused outreach initiatives, OSF HealthCare has already guided 35% of the Ministry's eligible patients in Illinoisto receive a low-dose CT scan (LDCT), the standard of care for lung cancer early detection. The goal is to further increase screening among eligible OSF patients by incorporating the FirstLook Lung liquid biopsy test into the primary care setting. The test will be offered at 18 locations initially, with plans to make it OSF Ministry-wide within a year.

"FirstLook Lung, because it is a simple blood test, offers a way to improve lung cancer screening in communities not currently receiving it, and provides a result that can help patients and their doctors decide together about proceeding with an LDCT scan," said Peter B. Bach, MD, DELFI's Chief Medical Officer. "The goal is to detect the possibility of cancer early through this test that is easy to incorporate into the routine blood work of eligible patients who have not yet been screened. We are proud to partner with OSF HealthCare to improve the health of the communities they serve."

The test works by evaluating patterns of DNA fragments in the blood that reveal the presence of lung cancer. In an independent validation, FirstLook Lung was shown to have 80% sensitivity in a screening population, including reliable detection of the earliest stages of the disease. The test also demonstrated a negative predictive value (NPV) of 99.8%, a measure of how unlikely it is that lung cancer will be detected by LDCT if the FirstLook Lung test returns a 'Not Elevated' result. 

"Early detection of lung cancer is key to improving patient outcomes, and we are confident that innovative, accessible new screening approaches like FirstLook Lung will move the needle on lung cancer screening rates among our patients," said James McGee, MD, radiation oncologist and founding director of the OSF HealthCare Cancer Institute. "We are encouraged that FirstLook Lung's advanced technology will not only offer our patients a simpler way to enter the screening funnel but will also give our practitioners the accurate data needed to make the right decision about the next steps in lung cancer detection for each patient."

Source: OSF HealthCare and DELFI Diagnostics Announce Collaboration to Improve Lung Cancer Screening Rates