Sensitivity of a blood ctDNA-based multimodal test for the detection of advanced colorectal neoplasms

Blood-based screening tests for colorectal cancer (CRC) could be particularly useful for population-based screening as they could be easily implemented in routine medical care. However, so far available blood-based tests did not reach sufficient accuracy to be competitive with established noninvasive CRC screening tests, such as fecal immunochemical tests (FITs).1 The study by Bessa and colleagues provides a valuable contribution to exploring the diagnostic accuracy of a novel multimodal circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA)-based blood assay that integrates genomics, epigenomics and fragmentomics (as well as proteomics in refined version) to detect CRC and its precursors.