For example, 10 million people in the United States and Europe are at high risk of developing liver cancer each year, often due to a pre-existing medical condition such as cirrhosis. These patients are enrolled in surveillance programmes for early liver cancer detection, primarily through ultrasound imaging, which is recommended twice yearly due to the fast progression of liver cancer.
However, detection rates remain low because ultrasound lacks sufficient sensitivity, particularly in overweight individuals. Additionally, poor adherence to the programme is common, as it requires a separate appointment from routine blood tests and is hindered by the known limitations of ultrasound.
A liquid biopsy test could address these challenges.
Healthy, abnormal and cancerous cells secrete thousands of tiny membrane-bound vesicles per day known as Extracellular Vesicles (EVs). EVs contain multi-omics cargo such as DNA, RNA, proteins, lipids, and metabolites. When a blood sample is taken, it contains billions of these EVs including hundreds of thousands derived from specific organs like the liver. For more visual explanations, please watch our 3D video.
Once considered mere cellular waste, EVs are now recognised for their crucial role in facilitating communication between cells and organs across both short and long distances. They have been recently shown to play a significant part in both health and diseases, including cancer.
Mursla Bio's cutting-edge technologies analyse the cargo of organ-specific EVs in blood, such as those originating from the liver, with unmatched precision. This enables advanced, non-invasive tissue biopsies of patients at any time, detecting diseases like cancer at their earliest stages.
Mursla Bio pioneered three EV technologies to achieve optimal clinical outcomes: (i) Organ-specific EV isolation, (ii) AI-enabled multi-omics biomarker discovery from EV cargo, (iii) Scalable EV multi-omics assays for clinical use.
