Pre-diagnosis plasma cell-free DNA reveals early signatures of prostate and breast cancer risk up to eight years prior to clinical detection.

Pre-diagnosis plasma cell-free DNA methylation signatures predict prostate and breast cancer risk up to nine years before diagnosis, with hazard ratios of 3.55 and 2.3 respectively.

• Why it matters: Early detection of cancer risk can enable preventive interventions and improve patient outcomes, but reliable early biomarkers are lacking.
• What they did: Genome-wide cfDNA methylation profiling was performed on 491 plasma samples collected up to nine years prior to diagnosis, revealing cancer-associated epigenetic alterations and predictive signatures.
• The result: Silencer-region methylation predicted future prostate cancer with a 3.55-fold increased hazard, while enhancer hypermethylation modestly predicted breast cancer and strongly distinguished late-stage cases, supporting cfDNA methylation as a promising early biomarker.