In short
The Male Room with Dr. Jesse Mills: Episode Summary
Episode Title
Catching Cancer Early: What’s Actually Possible Now?
Overview In this episode, Dr. Jesse Mills interviews Dr. Josh Ofman, president of GRAIL, a biotech company that has developed a revolutionary blood test designed to detect multiple types of cancer early by analyzing DNA shed by tumors. The discussion focuses on the mechanics of multi-cancer early detection, the technology's implications in the field of longevity, and the surrounding debates on screening, including concerns about over-screening and false positives.
Key Themes and Discussions
- Introduction of Dr. Josh Ofman
- Background: Dr. Ofman has a medical background as a gastroenterologist and has transitioned into biotechnology, focusing on the intersection of public health and technology.
- Interest in Cancer Screening: His journey has led to an interest in improving cancer diagnostics, primarily through technology assessment and evaluation of public health impacts.
- The Importance of Multi-Cancer Early Detection
- Current Screening Limitations: Traditional cancer screenings focus on individual cancers (e.g., mammograms for breast cancer, colonoscopies for colon cancer), which often have high false positive rates.
- Detection Statistics: Only 14% of cancers are currently being detected through existing screenings, and 80% of cancer deaths are due to cancers not actively screened for.
- GRAIL's Innovative Approach
- Technology Overview: GRAIL’s blood test analyzes circulating tumor DNA and focuses on methylation patterns rather than mutations, which has shown a much higher specificity and lower false positive rates.
- Predictive Accuracy: The test has an estimated positive predictive value of 63% and sensitivity for several deadly cancers nearing 70%.
- Patient Journey with GRAIL's Test
- Testing Process: Patients can be evaluated by their physicians or through telemedicine to determine eligibility for the test. Blood samples are drawn and analyzed, with results typically returned within two weeks.
- Outcomes for Positive Tests: If a cancer signal is detected, the test also predicts the likely origin of the cancer, enabling targeted follow-up diagnostics.
- Ethical Considerations and Challenges
- Concerns About Over-Screening: There is a debate regarding whether increased screening could lead to over-diagnosis, where patients may be treated for cancers that might not have harmed them.
- Need for Accurate Information: Dr. Ofman emphasizes the importance of not dismissing new technologies prematurely without considering their potential benefits, especially given the high stakes of untreated cancers.
Key Takeaways
- Shift in Cancer Screening Paradigms: Current cancer screening methodologies are outdated, and a shift towards multi-cancer detection could significantly improve early diagnosis rates.
- Integrative Health Perspective: The discussion highlights the importance of understanding the balance between advancing technology and maintaining ethical standards in patient care.
- Empowerment Through Knowledge: Patients should be informed of their screening options, enabling them to make educated decisions about their health.
Final Thoughts Dr. Mills and Dr. Ofman conclude the episode by reiterating the importance of early detection in improving cancer outcomes and the need for continued advocacy and research in the field to address the rising incidence of cancer globally.
Contact Information For questions or feedback, listeners can email Dr. Mills at: themaleroompod@gmail.com.
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This summary captures the essence and critical discussions of the podcast episode while highlighting the advancements in cancer screening and the importance of informed decision-making in healthcare.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOJosh Hoffman's Journey in Medicine
4:55 to 7:00
Explore Josh Hoffman's background and transition into cancer diagnostics.
“And it's great to see you and to be with you.”
The Evolution of Cancer Screening Technology
7:00 to 8:24
Learn about advancements in cancer screening from basic methods to sophisticated technologies.
“They were combining it with educational records, police records, trying to predict, you know, could we know, you know, more about these individuals, their longevity, for example.”
Understanding Genomic and Methylation Profiles
8:24 to 10:46
Discuss the significance of genomic and methylation analysis in cancer diagnosis.
“analysis, you know, general basic whole genome sequencing and, you know, looking at somatic, you know, mutations and chromosomal changes, very basic stuff back then.”
The Impact of AI on Molecular Diagnostics
10:46 to 13:05
Examine how AI has transformed the field of molecular diagnostics.
“to try to understand disease natural history, diagnostics, and therapeutics.”
Public Health Applications of Genomics
13:05 to 14:05
Analyze the potential of genomic technology in public health improvements.
“So that opens up, and I think you're right, some machine learning accelerated all of these molecular diagnostics by years, you know, as opposed to waiting and waiting and waiting.”
Understanding the Human Genome Project's Impact
14:05 to 18:41
Learn about the significance of the Human Genome Project in cancer detection and personalized medicine.
“And I think that's important because I think they're, you know, one of the things we do on this podcast a lot is try to educate people enough so they can make decisions on their own.”
Introduction to the Uplift Bra and NYX
18:41 to 19:42
Discover the innovative Uplift Bra from NYX that combines comfort and support.
“We can video chat from space, order groceries just by talking out loud.”
The Evolution of Cancer Screening Techniques
21:41 to 28:00
Examine the history and advancements in cancer screening methods over the decades.
“I was thinking about cancer screening and just where we've come.”
Understanding the Gallery Test Mechanism
28:00 to 29:28
Learn how the Gallery test detects cancer signals through DNA analysis.
“I think, you know, just to finish the story about the gallery test.”
Identifying Elevated Cancer Risks
29:28 to 31:30
Discover the factors that elevate cancer risk and when to consider testing.
“And when you have a positive result, the likelihood that you're sitting there with cancer in that moment is about over 60%.”
Show all 21 chapters
The Impact of Occupation on Cancer Risk
31:30 to 33:39
Explore how certain occupations, like firefighting, increase cancer risk.
“You've had environmental exposures that are intense.”
The Patient Journey with Gallery Testing
33:39 to 38:08
Understand the process patients go through when using the Gallery test.
“Talk to me about the patient journey with Galleries.”
Revolutionizing Early Cancer Detection
38:08 to 39:04
Hear about the effectiveness of early detection and the potential for curative surgeries.
“You are potentially finding things up front that obviously is going to allow them to potentially be even surgical or targeted.”
Screening Challenges and False Positives
41:06 to 42:19
Discuss the challenges of cancer screening, including false positives.
“Brokered services by Open to the Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA, and SIPC.”
Understanding Cancer Screening Risks and Benefits
42:19 to 45:05
Learn about the risks associated with cancer screening, including false positives and over-diagnosis, and how advancements like the gallery test can improve outcomes.
“So what are the typical risks of screening?”
The Debate on Cancer Screening Efficacy
45:05 to 48:45
Explore the controversies surrounding the necessity and timing of cancer screening tests and the implications for patient care.
“New York Times and the recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Gil Welch is that, well, some of these early cancers you don't even need to treat.”
Longevity and Health Screening Insights
48:45 to 52:24
Delve into the relationship between health screenings, longevity, and lifestyle choices, and how they can influence overall health outcomes.
“we need to make with multi-cancer screening, where you want to optimize specificity, not sensitivity, be very safe about how it's implemented, and find a lot more cancer asymptomatically.”
Advocacy for Improved Cancer Detection
52:24 to 56:00
Hear a case study highlighting the impact of early cancer detection through innovative testing and the need for legislative support for such technologies.
“So there was a gentleman named Roger who took gallery in the first clinical study and had found a stage 2A pancreatic cancer.”
Understanding Cancer Patterns through PSA Testing
56:00 to 56:45
Learn how PSA testing can indicate potential cancer developments over time.
“but I can see a pattern underneath those negatives.”
Personal Health Tips from Dr. Josh Hoffman
56:46 to 58:19
Discover insights into maintaining health and fitness from a successful patient.
“But I always have to ask all of my guests, especially my physicians, especially guys that look as fit as you, what is your must-have to stay healthy, to stay grounded?”
The Importance of Community and Mental Health
58:20 to 59:16
Explore how relationships and mental well-being contribute to overall health.
“and I think that that keeps a good balance for me.”
Transcript
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1:51Are you kidding me? An oil change is the last thing you have time for. So drive into Take 5 and let our techs change your oil, check your tires, top off your fluids, and have you back on the road pit stop fast. All while you stay in your car. No putting your entire schedule on hold. No upsells, no problem. So you can get back to your to-do list. Or not. Find your nearest shop at Take5.com. Take 5. The stay in your car 10-minute oil change. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it in my room. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it, the mailroom. Welcome to the mailroom. Woo! Welcome back to the mailroom.
2:37Another fantastic week, another fantastic episode. I'm joined, as always, by Jordan Runtam, my inimitable, indefatigable, no-sleep-till-Brooklyn host. Jordan, you feeling good? You ready for this? No, no sleep till Brooklyn, no voice till the end of the show either. My voice is starting to go. Come on, you're holding up well for a guy that's hitting that winter cold season. Well, today, Jordan, we have a great special guest, a good friend, a former colleague of mine. I guess we're still colleagues, but a former professor over here at UCLA. This is Josh Hoffman, who's a gastroenterologist by training, by fellowship training.
3:15He went to the UCLA North campus that some people refer to as Cal Berkeley, but us down at UCLA, just call it UCLA North. No rivalry there where he got his undergrad degree, just like I did in liberal arts. I was a literature major. Josh was a history and philosophy of science major up at Cal and then went down to UC Irvine for his medical degree and then did most of his training, including a master's of science and health services at UCLA, which really is the premier. I'm not saying that just because I'm here, but premier health services research consortium and institute really in the world that sets the standard for this.
3:52But somehow Josh decided that a stable life in academics wasn't for him. And he went off onto a bio that could take this entire show. But just suffice to say a few of his highlights is he served as Amgen for years and was a senior vice president of global value access and policy. and now he's president of GRAIL, which is what we're gonna spend a lot of time talking about today is the idea of molecular diagnostics in cancer screening. And we're gonna look at a broad lens. I'm a urologist, so I'm sure we'll talk about prostate a little bit, but we'll have episodes fully dedicated to that. What I want from Josh is sort of to talk about not only how he got into this and how he made that jump, but also where the pillars of longevity fit in with cancer screening, because I've got some ideas about this.
4:37there's a lot of noise out there on longevity. And I think one of the main pillars is prevention. You know, you can do all the cold plunges you want and take all the serolimus you want, but if you don't know your cancer screening status, it's not gonna really help you very much. So Josh, long intro. I'm so excited to hang out with you. Thanks for coming on The Mailroom. Well, it's my pleasure. And it's great to see you and to be with you. And yeah, let's get into it and talk about all of this. It's a great set of topics. Yeah, so tell me, so how did you get into this? You're a gastroenterologist, So you're not an oncologist, but obviously you did training in internal medicine.
5:11So you know your way around oncology. But what was your personal shift where you said, you know, I can do something different, better? Is it intellectual curiosity? Was it public service? Was it a little of both? Talk to me about that. Yeah, I think it was a little of both. I think that I've always, you know, since I finished my training at UCLA, I was very interested in technology and public health and how they interacted. And in fact, when I was in my graduate postdoc at UCLA and the RAND Corporation, I studied a lot of technology assessment. Like, how do you know whether a technology is improving individual health or the public health?
5:53How do you study that? And I got really interested in that because it's a whole different way of thinking about studying something. You know, study programs, study implementing cancer screening was a good example of something we looked at way back in the 1990s, implementing disease management. Does that work? Is it improving public health? How do you study that? So I got very interested in that and spent my first seven years in academia writing and publishing and doing studies like that. And then I was doing so much about technology, I started getting recruited by life sciences companies to help them think about how do we prioritize our pipeline?
6:31We have all these different assets. I don't know which ones to prioritize over the other. And they were trying to recruit me to come help them do that from this lens of technology assessment, value, and public health. And I went to Amgen to do that. And about 10 years into my tenure at Amgen, we were developing a lot of oncology drugs. So I got much more interested in the whole oncology space and how much money we were spending, how little value we were providing. And then when I was at Amgen, we acquired a company called Decode Genetics, which was one of the first Icelandic company that was really looking at the genome, the proteome, the transcriptome, doing multi-omics to try to understand the population health characteristics.
7:20They were combining it with educational records, police records, trying to predict, you know, could we know, you know, more about these individuals, their longevity, for example. And when we acquired that company, I got really interested in the relationship between genomics and all of this. And then several years later, I got called by the team at Grail asking if I would kind of help them develop that company. So then talk, just unpack a little bit of history there in terms of what was in your tool chest at that time biologically and you know in terms of your going from western blots to gene chips to you know what did you have available to build the structure and even you know computational analysis i mean you're you know you're this is this is mid-2000s early 2000s that this all started to launch so you know i mean almost like you were inventing a field right the idea of i had zero about the graduate medical school in the 90s and there was no such word as multi-omics or genomics at that time, barely.
8:19So, you know, kind of give us a historical, what was in your tool chest? So early on, as we were developing drugs at Amgen, we were using basic, you know, mutation analysis, you know, general basic whole genome sequencing and, you know, looking at somatic, you know, mutations and chromosomal changes, very basic stuff back then. And trying to figure out, you know, you've got a KRAS mutation over here. You've got a RAS mutation over there. You've got a HER2 mutation over here. And could you develop drug targets that way? That's how it kind of started. By the time we acquired D-code, which was in about, I think, 2012 or 13, it was getting more sophisticated.
9:02And they were already beginning to think about multi-omics and what that could look like and the correlations that you could find. And Amgen acquired Decode really to try to find drug targets, genomic targets that could predict disease. For example, in hypercholesterolemia, what were the mutation profiles of those individuals? Could you predict who was going to get it? Could you have developed new drug targets? And so that was the basics. But by 2016, 17, it now converted into a much more sophisticated way of looking at the genome. And when Grail called me in 2018, they were looking at the methylation status of the genome because looking at mutations is quite limiting.
9:51I mean, it's important, but there's not a huge amount of information. In fact, you and I have mutations that cancer patients have, but we don't have cancer. They can be very specific. They can also be very nonspecific. So the gene regulation is really occurring through the methylation status of the genome. And it's these methylation markers that are controlling your gene cell differentiation when you're an embryo, your gene regulation when you're an adult. And they're a hallmark of cancer, for example, this aberrantly methylated DNA around tumor promoter and suppressor genes. So GRAIL had begun to look at something different.
10:28And I can tell you the origin story about how this big idea came to be. But by the late 2000s, it was a much more sophisticated approach to understanding the genome, thinking about how you could use these various, you know, the genome, the transcriptome, the methylome, the proteome, you know, all of this to try to understand disease natural history, diagnostics, and therapeutics. Yeah, and I think, you know, the analogy, I don't know if you'll afford me this analogy as a philosophy major as well, but to kind of explain it to the audience a little more detail. What you were doing then was a lot like navigating across the world in the 1400s where you had some tools, but you had no idea where you were going or what you were going to see.
11:14Because it's not like there really wasn't, and there barely is even now, this genetic map where you know that you're going to find something. you keep looking, which is why I think it's such a challenge and why also probably, you know, a lot of this has to do with some computational biology because you can accelerate this entire process by running thousands of experiments all at once, as opposed to waiting for that, you know, agarose to harden and have that Western blot go through. But walk us through that a little bit. Is that kind of a reasonable thing for people in their mind to understand like how complex this is?
11:49It's a great analogy. Yeah, because you don't know where you're going. Right. And they were just trying to do these genome-wide association studies, right, early on, just to figure out, you know, what were the correlations and associations between this genetic profile and their diseases. And they're very crude. But suddenly you had this explosion of genomic technology and AI at the same time. And it's that convergence of this explosion of genomic technology around 2017, 2016, and then 2018 and 19, this real emergence of machine learning. And it's the confluence of those events that I think really turned a lot of this on its head.
12:32Yeah. Because now you could do pattern recognition in a much more powerful way. On the sequencing side, you could multiplex, you could do a lot more genomic technology, and then you could use machine learning to really understand, train these models, understand patterns. And ultimately, that was the mechanism that enabled GRAIL's technology to unfold. Yeah, and I think that's the key is these watershed moments in history of science, usually it's science-based, is that convergence of two things that we didn't have before. So that opens up, and I think you're right, some machine learning accelerated all of these molecular diagnostics by years, you know, as opposed to waiting and waiting and waiting.
13:14And you think about the early days of the human genome, which was this revolution 20-odd years ago. Now we're really, that seems so, you know, like an old crank-up Model T. in terms of how they did that. You're exactly right. And I like to say, look, we've spent billions and billions of dollars on the Human Genome Project. I think it was, I don't know, over 20 billion. I can't remember the number back in 2003. And there's actually very little that has come from it from a public health perspective. We've created some individualized therapies, some genomic therapies. We've improved our understanding of certain disease states and cancer, but there's not been like a lot of impact until now.
13:56And I think what I'll talk to you about GRAIL is I think GRAIL's technology could be one of the first really public health applications of the Human Genome Project. Right. And I think that's important because I think they're, you know, one of the things we do on this podcast a lot is try to educate people enough so they can make decisions on their own. And this whole concept of shared decision-making, which was really big part of the DNA really of UCLA, especially in urology, just because we have some thought leaders in the field, Chris Seigel, Mark Litwin. And they, you know, we don't think information is a bad thing and we don't think too much information is a bad thing, but what you do with that, you need a steward.
14:34And the Human Genome Project is a great idea because if you think of how many things have come out of that, that are probably more, you know, how do we sort of fake our way through individualized medicine? How do you come up with something that could help somebody? But on the other hand, it's sort of more like, I don't know, woo-woo and not really good science, where then you abstract that and you say, well, you actually have a deliverable that actually can change lives. And that's what we're going to really get into. But you throw a lot of omics around, but I think because of sort of the science, just walk us through the DNA methylation process, because I think when somebody is trying to make a decision about, well, should I get this test?
15:16Right. You know, give us the 90 seconds to three or four minutes on what is the technology of gallery. And then we'll talk about the applications. Well, maybe the origin story would be helpful. Yeah. And then talk quickly about the technology. The origin story is fascinating. So Illumina was the big sequencing giant. And back in the mid 2000s, they were doing a study in healthy pregnant women to try to see if they could replace amniocentesis, where you stick a big needle into a pregnant woman's uterus and take fluid out that carries about a 1 % rate of aborting the fetus, with why can't we look in the mother's blood for the fetal chromosomes and the fetal DNA in the blood and stop putting a needle into their uterus?
16:06And so they did a study in 125 ,000 healthy pregnant women. And sure enough, they found, yes, we can see the chromosomes of the fetus in the blood because you're exchanging blood through the placenta. And yes, we can do that. But in the course of that study, they identified 10 women where the DNA in the sample of blood just looked highly abnormal. And at the time, the chief medical officer at Illumina was from the National Cancer Institute. and he says, you only see DNA like this in cancer. Oh, wow. And they called all 10 women back in. And sure enough, every one of them had an occult cancer. Wow.
16:47Not in the uterus. You know, they were all over the body. But what they found, the aha moment at Illumina was, huh, we may have just found a way of diagnosing cancer in asymptomatic people because they saw abnormally methylated DNA. And what does that mean? Abnormally methylated DNA are fragments of DNA that are in the blood that are being shed by tumors where the methylation groups that are attaching to the DNA are highly abnormal. In other words, they're hypermethylated, hypomethylated around tumor promoter and suppressor genes. And that's highly abnormal. And that pattern of around the genomic regions that are associated with cancer is almost never seen in people without cancer.
17:34Wow. So that was the aha moment. They spun out Grail as a company. We raised billions of dollars in capital and did some of the largest discovery studies ever done to try to demonstrate which genomic profile or genomic signature is going to be the best way to find cancer in people without symptoms.
18:01Thank you.
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21:41I was thinking about cancer screening and just where we've come. And maybe you might know this better than I, but, you know, the pap smear, that was probably one of the most, the earliest cancer screening tests where you take somebody asymptomatic. And that goes back to like the 20s or 30s or something. It's right. It's almost 100 years old was like the first time that we looked at finding abnormal cells, but on a physical exam under a microscope. Is that right? That's right. I mean, if you think about what we do today, we look for one cancer at a time, right? We look for breast cancer. We look for colon cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer, and cervical cancer.
22:20And the methodologies we use are decades old, right? Colonoscopy and cervical cytology is visual inspection of tissue, okay? Using your eyes to look at tissue, either through a scope or through a smear. And the others are imaging-based, right? You're looking at shadows in mammograms or low-dose CT of the lungs. And then the final one is proteins, like PSA, which is highly nonspecific but can be very helpful. So these are decades-old technologies, in some sense very crude. and the challenges with today's cancer screening is each one of those took decades to demonstrate that they had a benefit. They were all implemented way before there was any evidence of benefit.
23:11Then, you know, 20-year randomized clinical trials to show that prostate cancer screening makes a difference, mammography, you know, cancer-specific survival benefits took decades to demonstrate, government-funded studies. And where are we today? Those tests collectively are only finding 14 % of cancers. And 80 % of all the cancer deaths are coming from the cancers we're not looking for at all. So we have this incredible mismatch. And the other thing about all these technologies, I'll take colonoscopy as an exception because it's kind of the gold standard for itself, but all the other ones have extremely high false positive rates.
23:53So the deal we've made with single cancer screening, mammography is a great example, highly, highly sensitive, finds everything, but the false positive rates are in the double digits, which means if you have a positive result, the likelihood that that positive result is cancer is like five or 6%. Yeah. And the same, I mean, PSA is, you know, you said it, you got to spill it. You say PSA is not very specific. And that's what it stands for. It's a prostate-specific antitune. But I'm spending all my time counseling patients. It's specific to the prostate, but it's not specific to prostate cancer.
24:31Exactly. But it's highly misunderstood. Yeah, it is. And so when you look at the positive predictive value, which I think is one of the most important clinical measures for a cancer screening test, mammography is about 4 % to 5%. Low-dose CT of the lungs is about 5 % or 6%. Yeah, wow. Stool-based colon cancer screening is about 6%. Pap smear, so, you know, they're just low. And now we have a genomic signal being shed into blood right from cancer. Yeah. And the specificity isn't 80%, it's 99.6%. Yeah, so that's right. positive rate isn't 15%, it's 0.4%. So that's, I mean, is there anything between, I mean, are we going from, as you say, tissue-based or maybe protein-based to what you've developed and what is now commercially available?
25:24Is there anything in between? Or is this, this is that, I know we use the word quantum leap all the time, way overused, but this truly is an incalculable advance in the way we look at cancer screening. Yeah, I mean, it's a transformational change. It's a paradigm shift in the way to think about cancer screening. Because today, let's just take you as an example. We're looking for two cancers in you. We're looking, you're not a smoker. So let's say you were a smoker. We'd look for lung, colon, and prostate. Each one of those carries a false positive rate. Let's say you did stool-based colon cancer testing instead of colonoscopy in the double digits.
26:00Those accumulate in you. Has anybody ever told you or have you ever told a patient that your false positive rate, if you do this sequence of screening, is going to be 30 % or 40 %? Right. Impossible. No. So for the first time, now I can, rather than screening you for individual cancers, I can screen an individual for whatever cancer they have in addition to screening for individual cancers. We're not going to replace colonoscopy, mammograms, low-dose CT. We should never replace those. but we can add to it, compliment them and screen an individual because you and I don't get to choose what cancer we get.
26:38The day I got my colonoscopy when I turned 50, I felt pretty good about myself. But that day, I was 12 times more likely to be diagnosed and killed by some other cancer that I wasn't looking for than by colon cancer. I didn't know that. It's funny you say that too, because I had mine as well and it was so good. This had come back in 10 years. And it kind of left me unsettled, right? Because I'm like, well, then I'll be 60. You know, there's so many other things that are going to kill me between now and my next colonoscopy. And so, yeah, I think that's a great segue over to, you know, you received, there's a fascinating article in the New York Times, December 2nd, where I would love to unpack that because it, and maybe you can sort of summarize it for the audience a little bit, but essentially it was looking at some of these, you know, the idea of next-gen sequencing or next-gen cancer screening and the whole idea of, do we need this?
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27:33Or are we over-screening? Are we fear-mongering people into over-diagnosis, just like the prostate cancer story we talked a little bit earlier? Or are we doing something to save lives? Give me some data about, and they had a couple of great guys in there on both sides of this. So kind of walk me through your interpretation to that. And I'll sort of share my opinions on, and so where do we line up in the medical community in terms of what I offer my own patients? No, it's a great segue. I think, you know, just to finish the story about the gallery test. So basically to just complete the circle, and then we'll get to that question is, so what our test does is we draw the blood, we look for fragments of DNA that are in circulation that are being shed by tumors.
28:19we analyze that pattern of methylation. And if we recognize that abnormal pattern across 100 ,000 regions of the genome, over 500 ,000 of these methylation sites across the genome, we're looking for a pattern. We're not looking at mutations. We saw all those genomic signatures, none of them added to the performance of just looking at this methylation pattern. A machine learning classifier says we either see a cancer signal or we don't. And then if they see a cancer signal, we use the same methylation pattern, different features to predict where in the body it comes from. So if you got a positive result, it's a cancer signal detected, predicted location, pancreas.
29:04And so your doctor would know exactly where to go look. And our accuracy of that prediction is like 92%. And then you can go get a diagnostic workup. So our gallery test doesn't diagnose cancer. It diagnoses that you have a signal, a cancer signal, that's very clear in your blood and predicts where in the body that signal is coming from. And your doctor can then go diagnose the cancer. And when you have a positive result, the likelihood that you're sitting there with cancer in that moment is about over 60%. Wow. It does predict your risk of developing cancer. You either have cancer right now or you don't.
29:43And that's the false positive rate is about 0.4%. The positive predictive value is about 63%. And the sensitivity for the deadliest cancers, the 12 deadly cancers, for example, that cause two-thirds of cancer deaths is close to 70 % for early stage. Yeah. Jordan, you had your hand up. Yeah. This feels like I'm back in school. I went this year and had my physical. That was the first time I'd ever seen any literature on gallery. And Cancer Runs My Family, and they handed me the pamphlet and said, this is something you should look into. I'm about to turn 38. At what age should one, now that this is something that's relatively widely available, what age should one start considering getting these tests?
30:28So it's a great question, Jordan. First, we recommend this test for adults at elevated risk for cancer. And we benchmark that elevated risk at the absolute risk of a 50-year-old adult. Oh, wow. Okay. Any adult 50 and over is at about a 13 times higher risk of cancer. That's about an absolute risk of 0.4%, which is elevated. However, if you're 35 and above and have additional risk factors, for example, you're a smoker, you're a cancer survivor, you have a genetic predisposition, you have a very strong first degree family history, those all elevate age you and they age your cancer risk to about the risk of a 50-year-old.
31:10So if you're a 35 and above smoker, I think you're at elevated risk for cancer. And for many different types of cancer, if you're a cancer survivor, if you have a genetic predisposition, a Lynch syndrome, a hereditary cancer syndrome, a strong family history first degree, you're at elevated risk for cancer. You're a firefighter and you've been exposed to lots of things. You've been exposed to burn pits. You've had environmental exposures that are intense. All of those individuals are at elevated risk for cancer, even at the age of 35 and above. Yeah, I'm glad you brought up firefighters. I think it's such a public service.
31:44I still see firefighters all the time. It takes care of, you know, in Santa Monica, Malibu, obviously with our recent wildfires out here, I'm even more concerned about those guys, even in their 30s, the risk of prostate cancer and bladder cancer to urologic malignancies go way up just because of whatever they're breathing in, even with their protective equipment. And so I love that. And I think what I was going to ask you, is this, I mean, is it going to get smarter? In other words, does more data make your test even perform better? Absolutely. That's the beauty of these AI-driven diagnostics is that as you train these data sets on more and more samples, and we've done over 450 ,000 tests now.
32:29So we have a massive data set. the biggest methylation data set in the world, we believe, to train our machine learning algorithms to get better and better and better. Because what you're doing is you're trying to get rid of biological noise. And the only way to get rid of biological noise is to submit a huge amount of data to these AI machine learning algorithms so that they can, you know, understand the signal, you know, through the biological noise. So walk me through a patient journey. We had Jim Smith, who's a professor up at UCSF and a good friend of mine, on talking about sperm diagnostics.
33:09And we're both fertility specialists. We talk about a devastating diagnosis of if you do a startup company like Meatfellow, which is what his company is, where they're doing at-home semen analysis screening. and that guy gets an email saying, guess what, you have no sperm, that can be a diagnosis as devastating to some men as even a cancer diagnosis. So they've built in a lot of stewardship to sort of say, gosh, here's your next step. You're in Los Angeles, go see Dr. Mills and he'll take care of you. Talk to me about the patient journey with Galleries. As you know, a close family member of mine I sent for a history of cancer and thankfully that test was negative So I didn't, thankfully, get to experience the stewardship on a positive test.
33:58But walk us through that patient journey, Dr. Hoffman. Jesse, it's a great question. And I will get to your question about the New York Times article. Oh, yeah, yeah. I haven't forgotten. But this is really important, Jesse. And so first of all, this is not a direct-to-consumer test. So gallery is by prescription only. So a doctor needs to evaluate a patient, assess that they're at elevated risk for cancer, or whether by age, which is the most important risk factor, or these other elements. And if they're appropriate, we'll write a prescription for gallery. They can also do it from their doctor or use telemedicine through the gallery.com website.
34:36We have a telemedicine function. It's external. It's physician prescribed as well. So you go in and you get, so if you order it through telemedicine or at a doctor's office, there's a gallery kit that comes either to the patient or the doctor that has two tubes of blood. The patient will go to any Quest labs or the doctor's office or have phlebotomy come to the home, get the tubes drawn. They get shipped to our gallery lab, our GRAIL laboratory in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, where it will get processed. The patient will receive an email that the sample has hit the lab. The doctor will get an email that the sample has hit the lab.
35:16And then it takes about two weeks generally to process the sample. So the DNA that has to be extracted from the plasma, it has to be purified, it has to be amplified, and then ultimately has to be sequenced for this methylation pattern. And then the bioinformatics comes in and reads the pattern. And then there will be a report. It's a very simple report. Unlike most genomic tests, which have 30 pages of various mutations. This is like the first page tells you everything you need to know. Most of the reports, 99 % will be no cancer signal detected. And the recommendation is it doesn't necessarily mean you don't have a cancer because we don't find all cancers, not all cancers shed DNA into the blood.
36:06Keep doing your recommended single cancer screening test. That's really important. A negative gallery test is very reassuring, but it is not perfect, especially for cancer types that don't shed a lot of DNA, like prostate cancer and breast cancer and some lung cancers. So keep doing your recommended. 1 % of the results will come back, cancer signal detected, and then it will have a predicted origin. Bladder, uterus, stomach, ovary, pancreas, head and neck, testes, it will just come back and the doctor will know where to go look. And that's really the journey. And then the journey goes in the positives for a diagnostic workup.
36:48If the diagnostic workup is unrevealing, in other words, let's say the test came back, cancer signal detected liver and a CT scan of the liver was negative, right? The doctor then has three choices. Choice one is Gallery offers a free repeat blood test. Do it for free. Do it right now. Let's resolve this. If it's negative, that was likely just a false positive result and we'll see you next year. We recommend Gallery be done annually. And another choice would be just call it a false positive and see the patient next year. The other is go deeper and do an MRI of the liver or a very liver-specific MRI.
37:29and you know mayo clinic just published their experience and dana farber just published their experience and their ppvs were much higher than we've ever seen before because they were looking harder yeah and they found more cancer so they had a couple pancreas cases across those studies where the mri showed mild inflammatory changes and they did endoscopic ultrasounds and found tumors in the pancreas. Right. And you assume it's something like pancreatic that is a devastating diagnosis, especially when caught late, which most of the time it is because it's usually asymptomatic, especially if it hits the tail of the pancreas.
38:07That's right. You are potentially finding things up front that obviously is going to allow them to potentially be even surgical or targeted. That's right. And so we're seeing, you know, surgeons telling us they've never seen early pancreatic cancer like this, and they're going in for curative intense surgeries. And it's really remarkable to see. And where this is happening, you know, we're finding cancer in people who have no idea they have cancer because they're asymptomatic almost every day now.
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42:18Pandora's box. So what are the typical risks of screening? So the typical risks of screening are false positives. Okay. Again, right now, our five cancer screening tests that we're using every day in people all over this country, and we've made a deal with this, are finding about 187 ,000 cancers every year. Okay. But to find those 187 ,000, they're producing 8.1 million false positives. Yeah. Think about that signal to noise ratio of about one to 45. Wow. And we're spending 40 billion dollars a year on cancer screening. And guess where most of that's being spent? Working up all these false positives.
42:57Yeah. If you add gallery to standard of care screening, you can triple or quadruple the number of cancers detected. Okay. You can add another 450 ,000 cancers and only increase the false positive rate by a few hundred thousand because gallery's false positive rate is about 0.5%, or in the latest study, 0.4%. So again, it's transformational in what you can do for public health. So that takes the false positive worry off the table, I believe. People are still worried about false positives. They're very difficult. But because we offer the free gallery retest, they can be resolved very quickly. And in our trials, we've seen no real serious adverse events from diagnostic workups in the false positives.
43:44They get resolved quickly. And so that's one risk. The other risk of cancer screening is what you referred to earlier, over-diagnosis, meaning, well, we're just finding cancers that we're going to die with rather than die from, and we're subjecting these people to all this anxiety, and we never needed to find that cancer. Well, that's true for some cancers. I think that's an argument for encapsulated prostate cancers. It's an argument for thyroid cancer. It's an argument for some hormone-positive breast. But we've done multiple studies that show that those indolent cancers do not shed a lot of DNA into the blood.
44:23In fact, we don't detect them well at all. And if you look at the survival curves of cancers that we miss, in other words, because they're not shedding a lot of DNA into the blood, at every stage, their survival looks much better than what would be predicted by the survival curves in the SEER National Cancer Registry, whereas the cancers we do find look exactly like the survival curves in the SEER National Cancer Registry. And what that tells us is that gallery is very unlikely to be diagnosing cancers that are not aggressive and invasive and requiring treatment. That's the overdiagnosis. And then the third part to the article in the New York Times and the recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Gil Welch is that, well, some of these early cancers you don't even need to treat.
45:18That's a very difficult concept to get anybody's head around. And from an academic perspective, that may be true, but good luck telling us which ones those are. And I don't subscribe to that school of thought at all. And then the other school of thought in the New York Times articles, we shouldn't be doing any cancer screening tests until that test has been shown to save lives or demonstrate a benefit in cancer specific or overall survival. And while that's a very admirable goal, I don't think we should wait 20 years to, GRAIL's not going to be able to do that study. We wouldn't be in existence.
45:57If someone wants to do that study, you know, good luck, but the technology will be obsolete by the time that study reads it out. and we have technology today that can find cancer in people who have no idea they have cancer, why would we put that on the shelf for 20 years? I don't understand that logic at all. Yeah, I think that, I mean, what kind of irked me a little bit is the, I mean, there's sort of a paternalistic overtone to this as well. And, you know, one of the things I trained in, I guess, a little bit more modern era in medicine where we actually bring the patient into that decision making process.
46:34And so if you have a test where somebody can make their own decisions, and they're informed and guided, then for us to say, look, we have this test, but you know, you're probably not quite trained enough in public health. And you probably don't have a master's in health services to understand the risk benefit epidemiologic ratios for going through it. So let's just not do it. And then just trust me, I'm a doctor is kind of what I felt from that. Whereas, you know, I would want to know, I mean, I, even though I'm not an oncologist and sure I'm a trained physician, I can make some of those decisions.
47:08But even if I were just a very smart person listening to this podcast, just you're giving somebody a whole nother data set where they can make that decision with their physician about what to do next. You know, it's a, it's a great point. It's, it's very paternalistic, but there's a very conservative hypothesis about cancer screening, which is very nihilistic, which is like none of this really matters unless it's saving lives, unless you demonstrate that it's saving lives. And I don't subscribe to that nihilistic, very conservative hypothesis that it will be more harms done than good. I would like to ask these epidemiologists who've never seen a patient who are doing all kinds of models and proselytizing that we shouldn't be deploying this technology and Dr.
47:51Welch, you know, who is less healthcare, is better healthcare. I'd like to ask them what they're recommending to their own family members. Are they telling their wives and husbands not to get breast cancer screening and prostate cancer screening? Is that what they're telling them to do? I would challenge them on that very conservative hypothesis because, you know, cancer is about to become the number one killer of men and women worldwide. It is already the number one killer of people over the age of 50. And why is that? It's because we're finding most cancers too late when symptoms have already presented and they're already spread and our treatments are ineffective.
48:33Wouldn't it be good to give everybody an earlier diagnosis, more treatment options, and potential for curative treatments? And I would take that bet any day. And the deal that we made with single cancer screening is quite different than the deal that we need to make with multi-cancer screening, where you want to optimize specificity, not sensitivity, be very safe about how it's implemented, and find a lot more cancer asymptomatically. In our latest clinical trial of 25 ,000 individuals called Pathfinder 2, over half the cancers that were detected by gallery were in stage one and two. yeah when you added gallery to usual standard of care screens the cancer detection rate increased by seven fold wow okay imagine that yeah i mean it's that's the you know again and the the other thing i would argue with the reason that cancer is taking over the number one cause of death is because we've done a fantastic job of spending billions of dollars on cardiovascular screening Right.
49:40I mean, it's a whole nother podcast, but, but, you know, guys are dropping dead when we're 48 of heart attacks because we're checking blood pressure, checking cholesterol, we're getting eyes on statins, we're putting stents in people. All of this stuff costs a lot of money. And nobody should be dying of a heart attack today. That's right. I mean, we have such great screening for that. And so you're going to see somebody else, some other Grim Reaper is going to come up and be in there. But now maybe with this screening, then it's not really when you screen or when guys are dying. But if you can move that longevity needle a little bit because of adequate screening, you know, then you're doing something right, which actually brings me to a little bit of the pillars of longevity because you are in that space.
50:24And for me, well, actually, you're going to love this, you know, as another Angeleno. So this is the classic L.A. story that I think summarizes up where we are in the confusing world of longevity. So I was coming up the California incline, which finally opened after all those years coming up from ocean or coming up from the beach up to ocean. I did my Sunday long run along the beach. It was gorgeous the Sunday and a little bit overcast. And there I was in the heart of obscenely healthy Santa Monica. And I saw this mid-20s woman that could have been a model and her perfectly coiffed hair and a la yoga pants and everything.
51:01And she had an Erewhon green smoothie and she was drinking in one hand. The first thing I saw was she was crossing the street. And I thought, that's great. She's living this healthy lifestyle. And then all of a sudden, I saw this puff of vapor come out of her mouth at the same time. And I realized in the other head, she was having a little vape pen. And so I thought, how do you justify, how do you look at this existential crisis I have as a healthcare provider and the cognitive dissonance of seeing somebody vaping and drinking a green smoothie? So yeah, so I don't know. Unpack that for me. It's not a question as much as an SMH moment.
51:37No, it's a fantastic analogy. We see that all the time. I think the longevity movement is really helpful. Great. It begs a lot of questions. There's a lot of science to be unearthed. There's a lot of quackery out there as it relates to longevity, but there's a lot of good science being done. Yeah. And, you know, but we need to get back to basics. Yes, drinking kelp smoothies might help you and sitting in a cold plunge all day long might help you. But if we can find cancer early, if we can prevent deaths from heart attacks, those are the basic blocking and tackling of longevity. And none of that other stuff is going to matter if everybody's dying of late stage cancer because we're waiting.
52:23It was very interesting. You asked for like a case study. So there was a gentleman named Roger who took gallery in the first clinical study and had found a stage 2A pancreatic cancer. And he underwent surgical curative surgery. And he's alive and thriving six years later. And he was on the hill. They, you know, we're trying to, the stakeholders trying to pass legislation right now to give Medicare the authority to even pay for these tests. Because, you know, Medicare can't pay for screening tests. The only reason they can pay for PSAs, colonoscopies, and mammograms, and pap smears is because special laws were introduced to give Medicare that authority, believe it or not.
53:04And so there's laws that have been introduced. And there was a hearing in Congress. This gentleman's name was Terry, was up there. And they were grilling him about the false negative rate and the low sensitivity. And he just said, wait a minute, time out. You guys, standard medical care for asymptomatic cancers that you're not screening for, the false negative rate is like 100%. I go to the doctor every year. They listen to my heart and lungs. They tell me I'm fine. They're missing cancer 100 % of the time. So that's our comparison. And none of the epidemiologists, none of the skeptics are putting this into context.
53:46Yeah, it's a low bar. Yeah, they're saying, you know, your sensitivity is too low. Well, the sensitivity today for asymptomatic unscreened cancers is effectively zero. So if this is 50%, 60%, 70%, that's a step change improvement. Yeah. So we're not putting it in the context of what's going on today. There is nothing acceptable today about the status quo in cancer screening. Yeah, that's amazing. and it's very powerful, Josh, for that. I mean, I think it just speaks to what, A, your passion for what you're doing and I think you found your place, which of course is the other amazing thing about the world of medicine is we get to go so many different directions and I think your combination of really excellent screening stewardship, hard science, great data, the amount of research you put into this to come up with a commercially available product is laudable.
54:42And I think, you know, for me, I always need to leave a segment with this thought of, as we say, you're probably going to be okay. And so for me, I guess my okay moment is, you know, I'm probably going to worry less about microplastics and penile tissue causing erectile dysfunction and mercury levels in fish, and more about making sure that I'm actually getting the screening that I should get as a guy over 50. and I'm probably gonna be okay because it sounds like 99 % of the time my gallery test is gonna turn out okay. And for that 1%, those are the guys that we really are trying to save from an early miserable cancer death.
55:23Yeah, and what we've learned, the NCI has been studying this for 40 years now. And unfortunately, we know very little about the natural history of cancer, which was shocking to me when I came to GRAIL. I asked some very basic questions and nobody knows the answers. What we're learning about this direct signal, biologic signal from cancers, is they're moving through stages much faster than imaging would suggest. And so we need to be screening annually. And right now we're only producing a snapshot, but I've taken the test four times now. All four years have been negative, but I can see a pattern underneath those negatives.
56:03So we're gonna figure out how to add the movie to the result. And that's going to add a lot more information and the test will become even more valuable. That's a, it's a great metaphor. And actually it's, it's funny because we, we do the same thing on a crude level with PSA testing. Exactly right. That's right. Exactly right. So I see a guy at 50, it's 1.2. If I see him next year and it's 2.2, then I'm already starting to think there's a pattern that hasn't really turned into a, a blockbuster cancer movie yet, but I'm starting to look at it. And then, And those data points are so, you know, it allows you to make a little bit more of a diagnostic accuracy.
56:42That's right. I know you're up on Capitol Hill and you're advocating. And so I don't want to take any more of your time. But I always have to ask all of my guests, especially my physicians, especially guys that look as fit as you, what is your must-have to stay healthy, to stay grounded? What do you do every day to make you Dr. Josh Hoffman? Well, one of the things I did was I went and saw this great doctor named Dr. Jesse Mills. And he gave me some great advice. And it really helped me as a 50-year-old. I think I saw you when I first was maybe 54, 55. Somewhere in there. It's been a few years.
57:19I'm now 61. Get out. And you told me, stop with all the cardio and just start lifting weights. And you wanted me to do it four to five times a week. And I did it. And it transformed my metabolism. Yeah. And it made me feel much healthier. And so I work on, you know, I don't focus that much on my diet, but I try to eat healthy. I work out all the time. I lift weights five days a week since you prescribed it. I treat my hypercholesterolemia very aggressively. I have familial hypercholesterolemia. I get my cancer screenings. I even did a whole body MRI last year with the Pernuvo scan, which every few years is a nice, I think, compliment to the gallery test because it's different things, looking in the brain, looking at other things.
58:06And so I take really good care of myself. And mostly, I think, mental health, my professional health, I pay a lot of attention to that. I keep a good community of friends and colleagues and family. And I have serious hobbies that I go after and I love. and I think that that keeps a good balance for me. Yeah, you gave me chills there. I think you're right. I mean, I think that's the other subtext of the show is just guys being open and somewhat vulnerable to what we do because we're usually not. We don't have a view for guys unless it's a sports center or something like that. But these are the secrets.
58:43And I love that you brought up mental health because obviously that's another pillar of longevity that if you don't have that connection, If you don't have a friend group or a family group, the feeling and the isolation and loneliness that can be out there is true. So all the cancer screening, sure, that's going to save lives. But man, yeah, I love what you said there, Josh. Like yourself, work that you're passionate about also, having a wonderful relationship. I'm really fortunate to be in a great marriage with a very supportive wife to enable me to do this and to work on something I'm so passionate about.
59:16Very lucky. I love it. Well, it's great seeing you look up. My son's up on Capitol Hill as well, working in Congress. And say hi to inform me. Tell him to make sure he hurries home for Christmas. And I'll see you back in LA at Erewhon before you know it. Jesse, great seeing you. Jordan, great seeing you as well. Awesome. Great talking to you. All right, Josh. Be well. Thank you so much. This is awesome.
59:45Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it in the mailroom Let's talk about it Let's talk about it in the mailroom Let's talk about it Let's talk about it in the mailroom The Mailroom with Dr. Jesse Mills was a production of iHeartRadio. It was executive produced by Jordan Rontag. It was edited, mixed, and mastered by Bahid Frazier, and the theme was provided by Long Transit. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe and leave a review. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This program is intended for educational and informational purposes only.
1:00:38It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Consult your health care provider for any medical or other related questions or concerns. The views and discussions aired on this podcast are those of Dr. Mills and do not represent the official positions of UCLA or UCLA Health.
1:01:04It's tax season, and by now we're all a bit tired of numbers. But here's an important one you need to hear. $16 billion. That's how much money in refunds the IRS flagged for possible identity fraud. But it's not all grim news. LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second and alerts you to threats you could easily miss on your own. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it. Guaranteed. Save up to 40 % your first year. Visit LifeLock.com slash iHeart. Terms apply. This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem? Business software is expensive. And when you buy software from lots of different companies, it's not only expensive, it gets confusing, slow to use, hard to integrate.
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From the publisher
Dr. Jesse Mills sits down with gastroenterologist-turned-biotech leader Dr. Josh Ofman, president of GRAIL, the company behind a groundbreaking blood test designed to detect dozens of cancers early by analyzing DNA shed by tumors. They break down how multi-cancer early detection works, who should consider testing (even before age 50), and how the technology fits into the larger—and often confusing—longevity conversation. The episode also tackles concerns about over-screening, false positives, and why waiting decades for perfect data may cost lives today.
Have a question for Dr. Mills? Send us an email at: themaleroompod@gmail.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

