On Feb. 21, 2024, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center announced it was at the helm of a new clinical trials consortium, the Cancer Screening Research Network (CSRN), created by the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, to advance the Cancer Moonshot program by improving early detection of cancers.

Fred Hutch will lead the CSRN’s Coordinating and Communication Center (CCC) and the Statistics and Data Management Center (SDMC) that will oversee cancer screening clinical trials enrolling diverse participants. The initial studies will examine Multi-Cancer Detection assays (MCDs), which look for byproducts of cancer cells in blood or other bodily fluids that could indicate early-stage cancer.

Although these tests are being commercially marketed as effective cancer screening tools, they are so new that there is no research showing they actually work to reduce deaths from cancer. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not authorized any MCD tests. But, if research shows that these new blood tests are successful at detecting cancer early and preventing cancer-related deaths, it could help reshape the cancer landscape. Any positive results would need to be confirmed by further testing.