The Unholy Grail of cancer screening: or is it just about the Benjamins?

Abstract

The biotechnology company Grail developed a non-invasive blood test (Galleri test) which is claimed to detect 50 types of cancer at early and potentially curable stages. The initially promising results from prospective studies, and the anticipated financial success of Grail led the sequencing giant Illumina to purchase Grail for $8 billion (2021). Following this event, Grail collaborated with the UK National Health System to further clarify the test's capability, in a 3-year prospective trial, along with the standard of care. At the end of the first year, UK-NHS announced that they will suspend the trial due to unsatisfactory clinical performance and until they analyze the data for the first year (which already enrolled 140,000 participants). Legal and financial issues between the interested parties are currently in flux. We previously expressed concerns about the sensitivity and specificity of the Galleri test. In this opinion paper, we revisit the hyped technology, and we provide new suggestions on the use of this test.