CScreener: How it works

Overview:

CScreener when first developed was used as a COVID19 screener to detect COVID in people and groups. Now, CScreener has moved into the cancer research space to detect early cancer in patients. While this screening tool provides a means to assess your health and catch signs of cancer in patients, people must always be pragmatic about analyzing the results they get and consult a doctor to figure out treatment plans that align with the cancer diagnosis.

What it does:

The current process focuses on sensitivity and specificity for early cancer using chemo markers. Sensitivity refers to a test’s ability to detect diseases and result in a positive test. Specificity refers to a percentage of people who don’t have the disease and have a negative test result. The CScreener looks for genetic tumor markers which raises specificity and sensitivity to the 90th percentile rather than using genomics and looking at circulating cells. There are three components used to test diagnostics through this screener. The first is that you have an abnormal test which means you have or are at high risk for a specific cancer. The second is that if you have metastasis (movement of cancer cells from one organ/tissue to another) from a certain cancer it could lead to another cancer such as having metastasis from breast cancer leading to prostate cancer hypothetically. The final component is if you are actually responding to treatment. The CScreener also asks questions about if the patient has a history of various diseases of conditions in order to properly screen for cancer.

What it does not do:

While CScreener can pinpoint if the patient has a specific cancer, it cannot cure or prevent the cancer by itself. It is also more financially feasible compared to other screening options. The CScreener does ask for smoking history to screen for lung cancer and other impacts, but there is no data about other lifestyle choices the patient needs to input into the screener to show if that raises the risk of cancer.

Written by Sharon and EJ