New Test for Early Detection of Lung Cancer

A simple, new noninvasive test is designed to aid the early detection of lung cancer. The test, called ClearSign, is performed on sputum, the material brought up from the lungs after a deep cough, which is collected by using an induction procedure where coughing is induced by breathing salt water vapor. The test has received Health Canada approval as well as the CE Mark.

ClearSign was developed by Perceptronix Medical (Vancouver, Canada). Sputum induction is offered at the Perceptronix Clinical Quantitative Cytology Laboratory (also in Vancouver), which performs the ClearSign sputum test. In addition, Perceptronix offers a test called the ClearCyte test, which is used to measure gross genomic aberrations (DNA ploidy) to assist physicians with clinical diagnosis and prognosis of cancer. Sputum samples are analyzed by Perceptronix to yield a ClearSign score that indicates the likelihood that an individual has lung cancer, similar to other detection tests such as the Pap test for cervical cancer or the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test for prostate cancer.

Early detection of cancer is the key to a positive outcome. Patients diagnosed with stage III lung cancer have a 70% five-year survival rate, which is significantly higher than the 10% survival rate among those diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer or worse.



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