Detecting Cancer and Other Diseases
Broadcast Retirement Network's Jeffrey Snyder discusses a single test to detect cancer and other diseases with UCLA's Jasmine Zhou, PhD.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Well, joining me now is Dr. Jasmine Zhao of UCLA. Dr. Zhao, great to see you. Thanks for joining us this morning.
Jasmine Zhou, PhD., UCLA
Thank you for the opportunity to speak.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, it's great to talk to you. Let me start off with a basic question. How important, how critical is it for us, for doctors to know about diseases in advance, like cancer, like heart disease, other diseases?
Jasmine Zhou, PhD., UCLA
Yeah. As we all know, the early detection is very important. You know, for cancer, we know that if, you know, the cancer is detected at a later stage, then, you know, very little survival chance, even though with, you know, development of all kinds of therapy, it's getting better, but still, you know, the outlook is not very good.
So, on the contrary, if the cancer is detected earlier, then, you know, in the early stage, you know, stage one, hopefully, then, you know, a surgery will, you know, address most of the issue. Yeah, so, you know, yeah.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Go ahead, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.
Jasmine Zhou, PhD., UCLA
It's usually, you know, much, much better, you know, above 80% for the most cancer type, yeah.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So, it's really important, it's critical to detect it early so you can treat it, and you and the team at UCLA have come up with a early detection, for lack of, you know, I'm not a doctor, but you've come up with a way to detect these diseases earlier. First, what is it called, and how does it work?
Jasmine Zhou, PhD., UCLA
It's called a massive scan test, and what it does is that it profiles the macellation pattern, it's an epigenetic pattern of the cell-free DNA, you know, the DNA floating around in the blood cells, you know, the way it profiles the macellation of cell-free DNA, genome-widely. So, basically, it captures the epigenetic markers of cell-free DNA, broadly. And we know that cell-free DNA actually coming from all kinds of organ in our body, because every day, about 50 to 70 billion cells die in our body, and those cells just share the DNA and other debris into the bloodstream.
So, therefore, in our body, in our blood, you know, there are DNA floating around, which is called a cell-free DNA, and the epigenetic pattern of those DNA could, you know, tell us information about all organs in our body. And if somebody has tumor, there'll be tumor DNA, and the epigenetic pattern of the cell-free DNA will tell us, you know, whether there is tumor DNA there, you know, if the signal is strong enough, then we'll know, and if the person has cancer, in which part of body, in which organ the cancer resides.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So, how does it, well, do I have to submit a blood sample? Is it vials and vials of blood? How does it work?
Do you collect a sample from the patient and run it through the process?
Jasmine Zhou, PhD., UCLA
Yeah, so we collect a tube of blood. You know, in principle, you know, the paper we mentioned, you know, in the PNS paper, we use 10 nanograms of cell-free DNA, which is basically from about two to three meals of plasma, four to six meals of whole blood. So, a tube of DNA, sorry, tube of blood, yes.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, I mean, I certainly wouldn't mind doing that if I knew in advance whether or not I had a disease. And, you know, I know you've just uncovered this or developed this method. How long till people like me are able to access this type of test?
Because I could see someone trying to do this annually before they're around their physical, right, to gain access. So, how long till customers can take advantage?
Jasmine Zhou, PhD., UCLA
So, in fact, the clinical indication of liver cancer early detection of this technology has already been licensed to the startup called EarlyDX and is ready for commercialization. The issue is insurance coverage. So, the team in EarlyDX is working on the insurance coverage, which actually needs a large clinical trial and they need to raise funds.
So, that's where the roadblock is. But otherwise, if patient want to pay themselves, then it's much a simpler problem, yeah.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, so, if I'm understanding correctly, it already has existed for quite some time in detecting liver cancer. Now it's ready for detecting other types of diseases, but the hangup, as usual, is around the cost and whether or not regular insurance is gonna pay for it.
Jasmine Zhou, PhD., UCLA
That's true, that's true. The assay itself, you know, the test itself has the information to detect many diseases. And liver cancer is the first clinical indication that the team, you know, our team has already conducted multi-site, you know, blind clinical study.
And for other indication like lung cancer, ovarian cancer, and so on, the clinical validation is still on the way. Now, for the clinical test to be paid by insurance, they require a large real-world trial and that takes more funding to do.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, understandably. But if this works as you've described it, and I'm sure, you know, we only have eight minutes to talk about this, but I'm sure you have documents and reams and reams of research to support it. I couldn't see why someone wouldn't, or organizations wouldn't want to fund it, right, doctor?
I mean, because you're on the brink of something and we could significantly, if it had wide-scale adoption, you could bring down healthcare costs overnight.
Jasmine Zhou, PhD., UCLA
Exactly. So, you know, the startup is raising funds to fund this clinical trial. And also, you know, EarlyDx is looking for a partnership with biotech or pharma or other AI companies, you know, to partner to push the expansion of the clinical development and also clinical indications, you know, to accelerate the process.
Because, you know, the information of the test would enable the AI-powered, you know, new universal disease detection. You know, in the future, if we collect enough data, then basically, you know, you can build an AI model for a variety of diseases. The test itself has all the information, but there's training data required to build, you know, an AI model as specific disease indication.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Well, anyone who's watching, they should certainly reach out to you, Dr. Zhao, and if they have the funds and wanna support this research. Personally, you know, I have no dog in the hunt, so to speak, but it seems like a no-brainer to me. And if successful, as I said, would certainly bring healthcare costs long-term down overnight.
Dr. Zhao, we're gonna have to leave it there. Great research. Thanks for joining us, and we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon, doctor.
Jasmine Zhou, PhD., UCLA
Thank you.
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This story was originally published April 16, 2026 at 7:30 AM.