Non-Invasive Gastric Cancer Early Screening Solution with >85% Sensitivity Developed by Guangzhou First People's Hospital Cross-Disciplinary Team

Ying Yanlu, Deputy Director of the Surgical Anesthesia Center at Guangzhou First People’s Hospital, holds a somewhat unique position: she is not only a physician dedicated to saving lives but also a patient with chronic atrophic gastritis (CAG). This dual identity has given her a deeper understanding and personal insight into the malignant transformation of gastritis.

According to the latest “Expert Consensus on the Management Strategies for Gastric Mucosal Precancerous Conditions and Lesions” issued in China, the extent and severity of gastric mucosal atrophy are closely linked to the risk of gastric cancer; the more extensive the atrophic area, the higher the likelihood of developing gastric cancer. In this context, endoscopic examination is required not only for accurate diagnosis but also for a detailed assessment of the specific characteristics of atrophic lesions.

To accurately assess the extent and severity of her gastritis, Yinglu Xiang disclosed to VCBeat that she adheres to a biennial gastroscopy schedule. During each procedure, biopsy samples are taken from areas with gastric mucosal lesions for pathological examination to determine the current disease stage. Although pathological examination is a minimally invasive procedure, it still causes some discomfort to patients, as she noted,Following an examination, gastric discomfort may persist for an extended period. Furthermore, the highly technical nature of gastroscopy requires precise operation by the endoscopist; any failure to obtain accurate samples may result in a missed diagnosis.

Building on this, Yinglu Ying has joined forces with Professor Yufeng Liu from the Medical Research and Innovation Translation Center at Guangzhou First People’s Hospital to drive innovation in the field of gastrointestinal tumor detection.HeWe baseLeveraging a rich repository of clinical specimens and employing novel technologies for specific immune cell detection, we achieve precise quantitative analysis of disease status during the critical stage of chronic atrophic gastritis (CAG) and throughout the progression of gastric cancer, thereby advancing the development of more precise early screening for gastric cancer.

In the late 19th century, Widal discovered that adding serum from patients with typhoid fever to *Salmonella* Typhi caused specific agglutination of the bacteria. This agglutination phenomenon could be effectively used to diagnose typhoid fever, a method known as the famous Widal test, which is also the earliest immunological agglutination test for diagnosing pathogen infections.

To date, immunological testing has been widely used in clinical practice, becoming an important tool for physicians to assess diseases. By detecting immune system responses, such as specific antibodies or antigens, doctors can accurately determine whether a patient is infected with a particular virus or bacterium. Furthermore, immunological testing plays a critical role in the diagnosis of autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus, providing strong support for early detection and treatment of these conditions.

Professor Liu Yufeng has been deeply engaged in the field of immunology, with his research focusing on the immunological mechanisms underlying disease prevention and treatment. Therefore,By selecting the technical approach of peripheral blood immune cell detection, we successfully identified two cell types closely associated with the progression of chronic atrophic gastritis and gastric cancer: PMN-MDSCs and HLA-DR+ Tregs.

As early as 2015, Professor Chen Weichang from the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University detected the ratios of peripheral blood Treg cells and MDSCs in gastric cancer patients and healthy controls. He found that gastric cancer patients exhibited high expression of immunosuppressive cells, namely Tregs and MDSCs, in peripheral blood. The elevated ratios of these cells were associated with the clinical progression of gastric cancer, and a significant correlation was observed between them. This suggests that Tregs and MDSCs may promote the occurrence and development of gastric cancer by participating in tumor immune escape and suppressing anti-tumor immune responses.

Liu Yufeng stated, “The advantages of early immunological screening technologies lie in their non-invasiveness and capacity for dynamic monitoring.”Patients need only provide 3 mL of peripheral blood at regular intervals for immune cell testing.This technology not only alleviates the burden on patients but also holds promise for extending the interval between gastroscopy examinations from the original every two to three years to every five to six years. If a patient’s monitoring indicators do not reach the warning threshold, they can be relatively reassured, thereby reducing unnecessary medical interventions.

In practical applications, immunological early screening techniques combined with gastroscopy are used to establish a diagnosis of atrophic gastritis and assist in dynamic follow-up assessments of disease progression.Screening should be specifically targeted at high-risk populations, such as individuals aged 60 years and older, those with a family history of gastric cancer, or those with a history of atrophic gastritis.Once the indicators reach the preset threshold, further confirmation is made through gastroscopic pathological examination. This not only improves screening efficiency and reduces costs but also helps patients detect atrophic gastritis early—a “warning signal” for gastric cancer—thereby enabling timely and effective treatment interventions to improve survival rates and quality of life.

The team’s goal is to establish a community-based cancer screening, prevention, and control system. To achieve this goal,The team plans to develop a screening kit to make gastric cancer screening more efficient and convenient.Ying Yanlu told VCBeat, “Although hospitals have made every effort to increase the frequency of examinations, appointment wait times remain long in the face of growing screening demand.” The innovative screening kit not only greatly simplifies the screening process but also can be easily implemented at the community level, alleviating the current strain on medical resources, particularly the prolonged appointment cycles for painless gastrointestinal endoscopy.

To successfully apply this innovative technology in community settings and even broader scenarios, optimizing the performance of the test kit itself has become the primary challenge.

First, regarding clinical sample collection, the team established strict inclusion criteria to ensure coverage of all stages of gastric cancer development, ranging from patients with non-atrophic gastritis and atrophic gastritis to those with precancerous lesions and gastric cancer, while also including a healthy control group to form a complete disease progression continuum. Since the target population for sample collection primarily consists of middle-aged and elderly individuals aged 50–60 years or older, who often present with multiple comorbidities, the team further excluded confounding factors such as diabetes that could affect study outcomes, thereby obtaining high-quality clinical samples.

It is understood that,After more than a year of effort, the team has successfully collected hundreds of high-quality clinical samples. Preliminary screening of these samples revealed that the sensitivity of the novel immune cell detection technology for gastric cancer screening generally exceeded 85%.“This has already met the screening criteria,” said Liu Yufeng.

Liu Yufeng told VCBeat thatThe team also plans to further optimize the detection system by introducing additional biomarkers, such as various proteins, to enhance diagnostic accuracy from multiple dimensions. He believes that through systematic improvements, the diagnostic accuracy rate is expected to reach or even exceed 95%.

Meanwhile, the team is actively exploring viable models for commercializing kits, committed to translating scientific achievements into practical applications. In terms of future development, Shangjun Investment, as the team’s translation partner, will play an indispensable role. Chen Yiqun of Shangjun Investment stated that, in the future, the firm will not only provide necessary financial support to help the scientific team successfully complete key stages such as patent applications, kit development, and clinical trials, but also leverage its abundant resources and extensive network to actively assist the team in establishing collaborative partnerships both within and outside the industry, expand market influence, and accelerate the implementation of new technologies for specific immune cell detection in early gastric cancer screening.