FirstLook Lung offers lung cancer screening that can be incorporated into routine bloodwork.
PEORIA, Ill. and PALO ALTO, Calif., May 13, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- 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 Illinois to 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."
Learn more about the service available through the OSF Cancer Institute by calling 1-844-OSF-4-HOPE.
About Lung Cancer
Lung cancer is the number one cause of cancer death globally and in the United States where it accounts for 25 percent of all cancer deaths–just as many deaths as the other four cancers for which screening is recommended combined (colon, prostate, breast, and cervical cancer). Screening rates for those other cancers are in the 60 to 70 percent range. Still, lung cancer screening with low-dose CT scans is received by only approximately six percent of screen-eligible adults in the U.S. annually. This means that 14.1 million Americans who should be getting screened every year for lung cancer are not doing so. According to the 2021 USPSTF lung cancer screening guidelines, individuals eligible for screening include those 50 to 80 years of age, and who currently smoke or have quit within the last 15 years and have a 20-pack year or more smoking history. Detecting cancer early can improve outcomes. The low rate of lung screening is an important reason why the disease's five-year survival rate in the U.S. is only 23 percent.
About OSF HealthCare
OSF HealthCare is an integrated health system founded by The Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis. Headquartered in Peoria, Illinois, OSF HealthCare has 16 hospitals – 10 acute care, five critical access, 1 transitional care - with 2,131 licensed beds throughout Illinois and Michigan. OSF employs nearly 24,000 Mission Partners across 150+ locations; has two colleges of nursing; operates OSF Home Care Services, an extensive network of home health and hospice services; owns Pointcore, Inc., comprised of health care-related businesses; OSF HealthCare Foundation, the philanthropic arm for the organization; and OSF Ventures, which provides investment capital for promising health care innovation startups. In 2020, OSF OnCall was established, a digital health operating unit, including a hospital-at-home. OSF OnCall delivers care and services when, where and how patients prefer to receive them. OSF HealthCare has been recognized by Fortune as one of the most innovative companies in the country. More at osfhealthcare.org/.
About DELFI Diagnostics and FirstLook Lung
DELFI Diagnostics is developing next-generation, blood-based tests that are accurate, accessible, and deliver a new way to help detect cancer. DELFI tests are built to solve the health issues of the highest-burden population, including those in historically underserved demographics, and have the potential to save lives on a global scale. FirstLook Lung, for individuals eligible for lung cancer screening, is our first laboratory-developed screening test and requires a simple blood draw that can be incorporated with routine blood work. The test is based on fragmentomics, the discovery that cancer cells are more chaotic than normal cells and, when they die, leave behind tell-tale patterns and characteristics of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) fragments in the blood. The DELFI platform applies advanced machine-learning technology to whole-genome sequencing data to assess individuals' cfDNA fragments against populations with and without cancer. FirstLook Lung uses these millions of data points to reliably identify individuals who may have cancer detected through low-dose CT, including early-stage disease, with a negative predictive value of 99.8 percent. This test has not been cleared or approved by the FDA. To learn more about the FirstLook Lung test, visit www.delfidiagnostics.com or www.firstlooktest.com.
SOURCE DELFI Diagnostics
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