Cotton swabs

Genomics diagnostic company Veracyte (South San Francisco, CA) is in clinical trials of its nasal swab for detecting lung cancer.  “The investigators trained the test on 411 nasal samples from current or former smokers who had lung nodules found on CT scans. They sequenced the RNA from each sample and plugged the data—along with clinical factors such as age, gender and smoking status—into machine-learning models and followed the patients for up to one year until they were diagnosed with lung cancer or benign disease.  They then tested the model on 261 patients and saw very low rates of false-positive or false-negative results. Of the patients with benign nodules, the nasal swab test classified more than 40% as having a low risk for cancer with 95% sensitivity. In patients with malignant nodules, the test classified more than 40% at a high risk for cancer, with a specificity of 94%.”    MORE

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