If I am reading this correctly, we may be able to use the saliva test to get close to 100% Sensitivity and then follow up on the positive cases with the blood test to weed out any false positives close to 100%. In tandem we may have a stand alone test near the perfect level...

The results showed that the test can detect cancer with 87% sensitivity and 91% specificity (sensitivity is the percentage of cancer patients that are positive with the test and specificity is the percentage of healthy individuals that the test reports as negative).

While the number of samples is relatively small (15 cancer patients and 22 normal donors), the statistical significance is very high (p less than 0.00025). In medicine, the lower the value of p (probability due to chance), the more significant is the result. A p less than 0.05 is considered as significant and p less than 0.01 is considered as very significant.

Dr. Moro stated: "These results are extremely significant because it is much easier and less expensive to screen for cancer using saliva samples than serum samples. We believe we can trim the assay to work even better, but even at these levels we can lower the threshold above which we say a patient is positive for cancer, thus increasing the sensitivity to close to 100%. Then a serum test can be run on the saliva positive cases to eliminate many if not most of the potential false positives.

These results harmonize very well with the cancer screening initiatives developed by the Goshen Center for Cancer Care. Our two organizations are now coordinating future plans to extend these results in preparation to launching a pilot cancer screening program using the RECAF tests."