A Proactive Way to Detect Cancer at Its Earliest Stages

A profile of Sam Gambhir, a doctor and scientist at the school of medicine, was read by a German-Americanentrepreneur. In the article, Gambhir talked about how he devoted his career to early cancer detection but lost his son to a brain tumor.

He immediately sent Gambhir an email, asking to meet, after reading Gambhir's story. Gambhir became a guide to the complex world of biology and engineering after befriending the pair.

Gambhir came up with an idea that was poignant. A simple but profound question was posed by Sam. He wondered what would happen if we stopped looking for cancer. We could force the cancer to reveal itself.

The patient will live longer if the cancer is found quickly. There are dozens of companies working on liquid biopsies, which scans blood samples for fragments of DNA shed by cancer cells. Gambhir wasn't satisfied with this. Waiting for cancer to grow large enough to be detected in the bloodstream was too slow for him, and he didn't know where to look for the tumor. He said that nature may not provide to us all the time. Early tumors can be seen if we bioengineer the signal.

Earli was launched in June of last year by Roeding and Gambhir. The California-based startup has raised tens of millions of dollars from a number of people.

Earli wants the cancer to come out. When bio engineered DNA is injected into cancer cells, it causes them to produce a synthetic marker not normally found in humans, like limonene, a chemical found in the peel of oranges. It could be a sign of cancer if a breath or blood test finds traces of that biomarker.

Identifying the location of the cancer is the next step. An injected compound forces the cancer cells to produce an activity that causes them to excrete a radioactive substance that can be seen in a scans. Clinics can use radiation or surgery to remove the cancer. Earli plans to use the same approach to target and treat cancer, although this idea is still in its infancy.

Earli will be used at every stage of cancer prevention and treatment, including for diagnostic monitoring in high-risk groups like smokers, to find out if there is cancer elsewhere in the body, and to make tumors easier for surgeons to locate.