Grant: Project Grant - Priority Announcement: Early Detection/Cancer Prevention

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most preventable cancers, yet it is the third leading cause of death in men and the second leading cause of death in women due to cancer. The mortality rate of CRC could be reduced drastically by rigorous screening. The current CRC screening test in Canada is a fecal-based test called the guaiac fecal occult blood test (gFOBT). The unpleasant nature and poor performance of gFOBT in the early detection of CRC are the main reasons for poor CRC screening compliance. Most CRC develops from precancerous polyps over many years, providing a long window of opportunity to detect and treat CRC effectively. If an improved screening test could also detect precancerous polyps, this would provide an extraordinary opportunity to identify early and prevent cancer since patients with positive screening tests for premalignant lesions can be followed up with colonoscopy to remove these lesions before developing cancer. We have developed a novel blood test based on a discovery that a protein, N-myristoyltransferase 2, is a marker for precancerous polyps and CRC. This study aims to test the performance of a novel blood test in detecting colorectal precancerous polyps and cancer in a larger cohort (n= 2000)