GRAIL provides a detection service to cancer patients. GRAIL's focus is to detect the cancer in the early stages because the survival rates for cancer patients detected to be in the early stages is 5 – 10 times higher. Furthermore, effective early cancer screening only exists for a handful of cancer types. Sadly, most cancers are detected in the later stages, where survival is a lot less likely
What Is GRAIL?
The mission of GRAIL is so monumental because of how complex the human biology can be. For example, research continues to unveil the underlying verity of mechanisms are very complicated compared to what we previously understood. This makes early detection a huge challenge. As extensive research suggests that the DNA shed by cancerous tumors fall into the blood stream which allows us to detect cancer in the body.
This proposes another challenge as GRAIL needs data from hundreds of thousands of people in order to banish the “needle in a haystack” problem from early detection tests with those who have cancer and those absent of the big C. All in all, this is a huge challenge when it comes down to the data.
Aside from the data, GRAIL's goal promises the decrease the world-wide deaths and catching this ever-challenging disease in its most earliest of stages is key.
Clinical studies will be used to validate the hypotheses as this is our best chance at getting our hands around this enormous scale of data. The approach of GRAIL is to detect cancer stages inside asymptomatic individuals by putting together a very high-intensity sequencing of enormous breadth and depth through practice of modern data science. It is one of the largest studies ever pursued through clinical trial programs in genomic medicine.
GRAIL promises to create exponential datasets to develop products for demonstrating useful clinical utility. Many of the mechanisms are not fully understood, but we know that small fragments of tumor DNA do appear in systemic circulation. An increasing body of evidence is starting to prove that these fragments also known as Circulating Tumor DNA (ctDNA) directly encode genetic traits of the tumors from where they originated.
Useful new tools have advanced the growth in genomic and molecular biology. Our understatement of this has now allowed The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project to establish that most cancers are extremely heterogeneous.
GRAIL will be able to sift through the genome and discover all the millions of unique patterns that define cancer. The ctDNA tests do have the chance to require sensitivity and specificity for early cancer detection. The fraction of ctDNA in the blood stream compared to DNA from non-cancerous cells is so small it is hard to distinguish the faint signals of early tumors because of the overwhelming amount of background genomic DNA.
GRAIL is the key granting the ability to query ctDNA at an extraordinary depth. This allows them to go deep into the sea of DNA and detect the ever so faint signals of ctDNA. What makes GRAIL so special is its ability to produce the highest quality DNA and transform it into clinically actionable insights.
One downside is that the sequencing is of such high intensity that it consumes approximately one terabyte of data per individual. So that is a challenge in scale to modern clinical medicine. GRAIL is launching all the latest tools and development for data science.
A deep understanding of cancer biology and working unambiguously to display tests for knowledge that will improve the patient outcomes when applied to the general population is necessary.
This will come from the enrollment of tens of thousands of individuals, some having cancer and some not having the disease. GRAIL then promises to conduct some of the largest cancer related studies to date. All of this will generate scientific and clinical proof of our impact.
Benefits Of Using Grail?
The benefits of GRAIL are very much worth the tedious effort of compiling all this information of cancer biology. Helping as many people as possible beat this monster of a disease is important. By finding the cancer in early stages, it is possible to improve survival rates significantly.
Another benefit would be that we would have an expansive amount of genomic DNA data for any other genomic problems that would need an ocean of genomic DNA data to be applicable in any theory.
Some downsides are achievable, I didn't say expensive. The fact it will take one terabyte of information per individual will mean that the mission of accumulating all this data will require a few super computers. The fact that there is so much genomic DNA information is just overwhelming.
Manpower for all the acquisitions of information and the sheer amount of time it would take to get this in the works is to be speculated. If this project could become applicable in the next few years it would definitely be worth it. This could be our leap forward into the investigation and extermination of this deadly disease.
Grail Challenges
All in all, the mission and goal of GRAIL is heroic and admirable. It seems practical in theory, but when it comes to real life application, it starts to feel rugged. I really hope to see what the future will hold for GRAIL. With all the information it needs to prevail, it could be 5-30 years before it becomes perfect. By that time, we could find new cancers or cancers could mutate into more diverse avenues of genomic DNA information.
Practically speaking, they have to go on a data frenzy very fast. The only way to get that many people to undergo rigorous and sensitive testing would be to offer some sort of incentive such as free cancer screenings or paying people for their time to come in. Sadly it's this way because a lot of people do not feel the need to care about something as big as cancer until it affects them or a loved one.
Not many people in the general population would understand the good they would be doing for cancer patients and victims if they would apply themselves selflessly to the GRAIL foundation and causes. If everyone would work together, the world as we know it would already be in the space age.
That's just not profitable, but a deal offering some sort of incentive to acquire the vast amount of information in a non-prolonged amount of time in order to to develop this technology could be contracted with high ranking insurance companies. The only reoccurring problem would be the introduction of new cancers or the mutated growth of another. This is based on the complexity of cancerous biology. GRAIL only needs to weigh the practicality but this would be a utopia for future cancer patients as spotting the cancer early on is key.
What makes this so special is that there is no other kind of program or organization trying to collect genomic DNA data on this scale. Plus the fact that this would be a big imprint into the cancer industry, cutting a lot of the mischievous profits that come from some forms of cancer treatment. I personally would like to see GRAIL prevail and achieve all of its goals for the sake of the cancer industry.
Just imagine if GRAIL was to achieve its goal of data collection and be able to offer affordable screening for the general population. Just imagine a world without the risk of dying from cancer. This aspect of the GRAIL foundation makes it very special indeed. Basically GRAIL needs advertisement sponsorships from mainstream Healthcare organizations.
It needs some sort of incentive to get people motivated to pay their tribute to the research of a better tomorrow. That being said the consequences and challenges might exceed the practicality of GRAIL'S intentions or goals; but we will never know until we give them a chance. A cancer free future is what we all need to be striving for.
Not just for our self but our children and grandchildren. For the next many generations to have a chance at beating cancer where we have failed, we must start this database now. Only then will we be able to have any predictions as to if GRAIL will be the knight in shining armor we so desperately need in the cancer industry.
GRAIL Final Thoughts
It is important that we keep some faith and not count it out as some theory because they have real statistics that can prove their practicality and possibility of a cancer free tomorrow. GRAIL has some big goals when it comes down to the amount of genomic DNA we need to compute but all in all, I believe that the application of GRAIL is a very good allocation of resources.
