ClearNote Health’s Avantect Multi-Cancer Detection Test selected for National Cancer Institute’s Vanguard Study
Critical study will evaluate clinical feasibility of multi-cancer detection screening tests and begin to determine how best to incorporate them into the standard of care
9 Jan 2025
ClearNote Health has announced that its Avantect® Multi-Cancer Detection Test has been selected for the Vanguard Study funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health. The Avantect Multi-Cancer Detection Test was one of two tests selected after a thorough evaluation of emerging multi-cancer detection technologies.
The Vanguard Study aims to address the feasibility of using targeted multi-cancer detection tests in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) designed to assess the clinical benefit of cancer detection, possibly in the early stages, through noninvasive blood tests.
The Avantect Multi-Cancer Detection Test is a simple blood test to screen for cancer in asymptomatic, generally healthy persons. It was designed to detect some of the deadliest types of cancer by profiling both the epigenomic biomarker 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) and genomic features in cell-free DNA.
Unlike conventional methods, ClearNote’s 5hmC-based approach provides a specific signal of early cancer development by measuring changes in active biology. This enables detection of the presence of cancer along with its likely tissue of tumor origin.
Early cancer detection is an important contributor to positive patient outcomes. In several cancers, patients whose cancer is detected in the earliest stages, before it has grown too big or spread to other organs, have significantly higher survival rates than patients diagnosed with late-stage cancer. The oncology community is increasingly interested in early detection tests, either for a single cancer or for multiple types of cancer at once.
For a more thorough evaluation of early cancer detection with emerging technologies, NCI has launched the Cancer Screening Research Network (CSRN). Its first effort will be to conduct the Vanguard Study, a pilot study of targeted multi-cancer detection tests. The CSRN involves nine geographically diverse clinical trial hubs that will enroll up to 24,000 total participants for the Vanguard Study to assess the feasibility of using multi-cancer detection tests in future RCTs.
“Being selected for this critical study after a rigorous, objective technology benchmark evaluation by the NCI is a huge validation for our company, our proprietary technology platform, our employees, and the patients we serve,” said Dave Mullarkey, CEO at ClearNote Health. “The Vanguard Study will showcase the many benefits of early cancer detection, which will help drive widespread adoption of our Avantect technology and ultimately save lives.”
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