Performance of a multi-cancer early detection test in the randomized controlled NHS-Galleri trial.

Authors

Richard D Neal, Saoirse Dolly, Peter Johnson, Helen Jones, Sir Harpal Kumar, Lennard Y W Lee, Yujin Lee, Wei Liang, Thomas Round, Rebecca Smittenaar, Jane Warwick, Peter Sasieni, Charles Swanton

Published in

Nature medicine. Sep 22, 2026. Epub Sep 22, 2026.

Abstract

The NHS-Galleri trial was a randomized controlled trial evaluating a multi-cancer early detection (MCED) test added to usual care. We reported elsewhere that the primary endpoint of a reduction in the incidence of stage III/IV cancer diagnoses in the intervention arm versus control arm was not met. Here we report prespecified secondary test performance endpoints among evaluable intervention arm participants across three annual screening rounds. These analyses were descriptive; there was no hypothesis testing. Participants aged 50-77 years (N = 142,250) were randomized 1:1 into intervention (MCED) or control arms. Intervention arm participants with positive MCED results were referred to National Health Service (NHS) standard-of-care pathways for diagnostic workup, with referrals informed by the predicted cancer signal origin (CSO). Positive test results were returned for 722 of 70,325 (1.03%), 518 of 64,498 (0.80%) and 561 of 62,323 (0.90%) participants in rounds 1-3, respectively. In aggregate, 937 participants had MCED-detected primary cancers. Respective by-round cancer detection rates were 0.60%, 0.40% and 0.41%; positive predictive values were 58.0% (419/722), 50.4% (261/518) and 45.8% (257/561); and negative predictive values were 98.98% (68,895/69,603), 98.90% (63,278/63,980) and 98.86% (61,058/61,762). Across rounds, specificity ranged from 99.50% to 99.60%; episode sensitivity ranged from 26.7% to 37.2% for all cancers and from 47.6% to 63.4% for 12 prespecified types; and CSO accuracy ranged from 91.1% to 93.6%. These data provide insights on the performance of the MCED test in population screening within the NHS setting. ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT05611632 ; ISRCTN: ISRCTN91431511 .

PMID:
42773209
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 23 Sep 2026.

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