Longevity Signals: Can We Detect Cancer Earlier?
You can now look for cancer in a vial of blood, years before a symptom or a scan.
The catch is the signal. The disease may occur in only a small fraction of people your age in a given year. The signal can be a few fragments of tumor DNA among billions of healthy ones.
Miss it and you have false reassurance. Call it when it isn't there and a healthy person can enter a cascade of imaging, biopsies, and anxiety.
That's the detection problem: finding more real cancers without creating too many false alarms.
That's the real problem, and a better sensitivity number doesn't fix it.
The assay is only half the question. The other half is who you're testing. Sensitivity and specificity describe the test; age, exposures, and family history shape what the result means.
Family history is one of the sharpest instruments we have for that. Not because it reads your genes, but because it tells you where to point the camera.
We're hosting an evening at House of AI with Dr. Min-Han Tan, founder and CEO of Lucence, whose liquid biopsy technology is distributed through Mayo Clinic Laboratories.
What we'll get into
How you pull a cancer signal out of circulating tumor and viral DNA, and why the sensitivity figures quoted across this industry don't transfer to people who feel fine
Why a 99% specific test can still be wrong most of the time it says yes
What a positive result actually triggers: the workup, the cost, the timeline, the anxiety
What family history does and doesn't tell you, including the patterns that mean you need a genetic counselor, not a blood test
Who these tests are genuinely useful for, and who should wait
Run of show
6:30 Doors, food, drinks
7:00 The shift in longevity and access. Kenneth Lou, Mito Health
7:20 Reading Tumor DNA. Dr. Min-Han Tan, Lucence
7:45 The Case Against Screening Yourself
8:00 Open Q&A
9:00 Close
Who should come
People who build with data and want to see these problems with clinical stakes. Anyone tracking their biomarkers and wondering what they still can't see.
Anyone with cancer in the family working out what to do about it.
Clinicians, researchers, and operators in diagnostics.
Note on what this is
Mito Health runs a diagnostics marketplace and we're adding Lucence's panels to it. There'll be a station at the back for anyone who wants to go further that night.
Good to know
This is an educational event. Multi-cancer early detection complements standard-of-care screening rather than replacing it, and it isn't a hereditary or genetic risk test.
Speakers give scientific context, not clinical advice. Tests are prescription-only, ordered through a licensed telehealth partner after online intake and clinician review, and a review fee applies. Availability varies by state. Not available in New York.