Thermal Liquid Biopsy (Tlb) As A New Diagnostic Tool For Patients With Ovarian Cancer: A Pilot Study

Introduction/Background Thermal Liquid Biopsy (TLB), based on Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC, calorimetric thermogram analysis of serum samples), is a new clinical approach for diagnostic assessment for patients with ovarian cancer. TLB is a highly sensitive technique traditionally used to study thermally induced macromolecular transitions. Our main objective is to determine the ability of TLB to differentiate between healthy controls (HC) and patients with Ovarian Cancer (OC). Methodology We report in this work the application of a multiparametric analysis of TLB profiles from plasma samples collected from patients with OC before surgery from 2011 to 2018 assisted in a tertiary-level hospital. Plasma samples collected from 120 patients were analyzed and compared with histological result to determine the utility of thermograms for diagnostic and monitoring assessment in ovarian cancer. Data from 100 healthy subjects were used as reference group. Results 120 patients diagnosed with OC (women between 29 and 83 years old) with a stage distribution of (I: 18%; II–IV: 82%), histology distribution (69% high-grade serous carcinoma, 18% clear cell carcinoma, 7% endometrioid carcinoma, 3% mucinous carcinoma and 3% others) compared to 100 HC with a homogeneous distribution from a blood bank were included in our study. The parameters included in our multiparametric method showed statistical differences between HC and OC. After developing ROC curves, AUC higher than 0.8 were observed for these parameters, exceeding 0.85 in some of them. The Youden’s index was calculated for all of them, finding sensitivity and specificity values higher than 75.0–90.0% (for the best parameter, both indexes were higher than 85.0%). Conclusion Results suggest that TLB exhibits high specificity and sensitivity values when comparing to clinical assessment/diagnostic imaging detecting malignancy for ovarian pathology. TLB provides a minimally-invasive, low-risk, low-cost clinical test, allowing personalized patient monitoring for diagnostic assessment of ovarian pathology and facilitating the decision-making process. Disclosure Nothing to disclose.