A recent study conducted by scientists from the Baihan Medical System at Massachusetts General Hospital in the United States has found that their blood testing tool, HPV DeepSeek, can identify head and neck cancer associated with human papillomavirus (HPV) 10 years before symptoms appear, providing patients with earlier treatment interventions and improving their prognosis and quality of life. The relevant research results were published in the latest issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. In the United States, 70% of head and neck cancers are caused by HPV, and the incidence rate is increasing year by year. Unlike cervical cancer caused by HPV, there is currently no screening method for HPV related head and neck cancer. Patients are often diagnosed only after the tumor has developed to billions of cells, symptoms have appeared, and even spread to lymph nodes. HPV DeepSeek is expected to identify this type of cancer 10 years before symptoms appear. This detection method uses whole genome sequencing technology to identify trace amounts of HPV DNA fragments that have shed from tumors and entered the bloodstream. The research team has previously confirmed that this detection method can achieve 99% specificity and 99% sensitivity in clinical applications, which is superior to existing detection methods. To verify whether "HPV DeepSeek" can achieve early identification years before cancer diagnosis, the research team tested 56 samples from the Biobank in Brigham, Massachusetts, including 28 from patients diagnosed with HPV related head and neck cancer and another 28 from healthy controls. The results showed that HPV DeepSeek detected HPV tumor DNA in 22 blood samples of 28 cancer patients, with the earliest positive sample collected 7.8 years before diagnosis, while all control samples tested negative, demonstrating high specificity. By introducing machine learning technology, the research team further increased the detection sensitivity to recognize 27 out of 28 cancers, including samples collected 10 years before diagnosis. Currently, the research team is conducting further studies based on hundreds of samples collected from the National Cancer Institute's Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial to validate this achievement. (New Society)