Chinanews client, Beijing, August 17 (Reporter Zhang Ni) Liver cancer is the second leading cause of death from tumors in China. In recent years, the number of deaths from liver cancer in China has reached hundreds of thousands every year... On the 16th, the "Liver Cancer" was held in Beijing. In the “Early Diagnosis and Early Screening Cloud Forum”, industry experts revealed such a set of data. In contrast to the data, China has not yet universalized early diagnosis and screening of liver cancer. How to deal with the challenges of diagnosis and treatment of such diseases is not only a concern of medical experts, but also the interests of all patients.
Photo by Wei Liang issued by Xinshe in the data map
On the 16th, the People's Daily Health Client and Health Times jointly held the "Cloud Forum for Early Diagnosis and Screening of Liver Cancer". At the meeting, Wang Hongyang, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and director of the National Liver Cancer Science Center, introduced relevant data from the "2019 China Cancer Registry Annual Report"-the incidence of malignant tumors in the country in 2015 was approximately 3.929 million. On average, about 10,000 people are diagnosed with cancer every day, and 7.5 people are diagnosed with cancer every minute. (The data from the National Cancer Registry generally lags behind 3 years)
She emphasized that compared with historical data, the burden of cancer continues to rise. In the past 10 years, the incidence of malignant tumors has maintained an annual increase of about 3.9%, and the mortality rate has maintained an annual increase of 2.5%.
“In 2015, there were about 365,000 new cases of liver cancer in the country, accounting for 50% of the global new cases. Liver cancer is still the most common tumor with the highest fatality rate among people under 60 years of age.” Wang Hongyang said.
But in contrast to this, the current early diagnosis and early screening of liver cancer is not ideal.
Hou Jinlin, director of the Department of Infectious Medicine, Nanfang Hospital of Southern Medical University, cited the clinical data of Nanfang Hospital as an example. By analyzing the characteristics of more than 1,300 cases of hepatocellular carcinoma in the hospital, only 40% of the very early and early stages of liver cancer accounted for. Many patients are already in the middle and late stages when they are found out.
Hou Jinlin emphasized that the average survival time of patients with early/very early liver cancer is more than 5 years. On the contrary, the average survival time of patients with advanced liver cancer is less than 1 year.
Early screening and early diagnosis of liver cancer is still a worldwide problem.
Wang Hongyang explained that at this stage, serum markers and imaging detection methods are mainly used. A single detection method, such as ultrasound, has a detection rate of 84% for liver cancer, and it is even lower for early liver cancer, only 47%. The detection rate of serum markers is also not high.
In her view, genetic testing technology, as an effective supplement to existing clinical testing technology, opens up new ideas for solving the old problems of early warning screening for tumors.
In the field of genetic testing technology, the scientific research team has also made new progress in recent years.
In 2018, the national multi-center, prospective 10,000 cohort liver cancer very early warning marker screening project (PreCar) was launched. The project was co-sponsored by Wang Hongyang, Hou Jinlin and Herui Gene, and nearly 20 domestic clinical centers participated in it.
According to reports, this is the first ultra-large-scale cohort study in the country that relies on whole-genome sequencing technology to screen, identify and verify very early warning markers for peripheral blood liver cancer.
At the meeting on the 16th, Herui Gene's new early screening product for liver cancer "Lai Si Ning" was released. According to Zhou Jun, CEO of Herui Gene, "Lai Sining" is one of the product series of the PreCar project. It is currently the first and only product verified by a prospective follow-up cohort study of 10,000 people in China and has reached clinical level.
Huang Zuxiong, deputy director of the Department of Hepatology, Mengchao Hepatobiliary Hospital of Fujian Medical University, said, “In the study, we found that there are many cases that cfDNA gene detection can be combined with serum markers and imaging to detect very early micro liver cancer in advance, early warning, early diagnosis, and early diagnosis. Treatment effectively prolongs the survival time of patients with liver cancer." (End)