# thromboSeq (tumour-educated platelet RNA)

Source: https://onco.cc/drugs/thromboseq/  
OnCo record `thromboseq` (Test). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

An Amsterdam research test that reads RNA inside blood platelets and detected 18 cancer types in a laboratory study, though it often flagged people with other illnesses.

## Summary

In In 't Veld et al. (Cancer Cell 2022), thromboSeq detected cancer in two-thirds of 1,096 samples from patients with stage I to IV cancer and half of 352 stage I to III tumours at 99% specificity in asymptomatic controls; in symptomatic controls with inflammatory or cardiovascular disease or benign tumours specificity averaged 78%. It predicted the tumour site correctly in over 80% for five tumour types. It is a research assay at Amsterdam UMC with no regulatory status.

## Fields

- Kind: Test
- Status: emerging
- Last checked: 2026-10-29
- Tags: test; mced; evidence:insufficient
- Brand: thromboSeq
- Modality: Multi-cancer blood test, academic research assay (platelet RNA sequencing)
- Mechanism: Sequences the RNA carried by blood platelets, which changes as platelets pass through and are signalled by tumours; machine learning detects cancer and predicts its site.

## Notes

- Evidence grade insufficient for the claim that taking this test reduces late-stage diagnosis or cancer deaths: no randomised trial of it has reported either outcome, and its published performance comes from case-control or single-arm studies. The only randomised result for any multi-cancer test, NHS-Galleri, did not show fewer stage III or IV cancers.
- What a result means: a positive result is a reason for further tests, not a diagnosis; a negative result does not rule cancer out and does not replace the screening tests that have been shown to work (bowel, breast, cervical and, where eligible, lung screening).

## Sources

- In 't Veld et al., Cancer Cell 2022: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ccell.2022.08.006

## Connected records

- technologies: [Liquid biopsy (ctDNA)](https://onco.cc/technologies/liquid-biopsy/), [Multi-cancer early detection (MCED)](https://onco.cc/technologies/mced/), [RNA sequencing & expression profiling](https://onco.cc/technologies/rna-seq/)
- institutions: [Amsterdam UMC / Cancer Center Amsterdam](https://onco.cc/institutions/amsterdam-umc/)
- key papers: [Detection and localization of early- and late-stage cancers using platelet RNA](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-thromboseq-cancer-cell-2022/)

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