The Current State of Cancer Screening and Multi-Cancer Early Detection with Dr. Rojan Kavosh

After graduation, Ms. K joined Stanford Children’s Health | Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford as a Perinatal Genetic Counselor, a role held from 2018 to 2021. Next, the Mighty K worked at PerkinElmer Genomics as a Genomic Testing Consultant from 2021 to 2022. Currently, Kavosh is the Medical Science Liaison at GRAIL.

Rojan Kavosh holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, obtained from UCLA in 2015. She pursued further education obtaining a Master’s Degree in Genetic Counseling from the University of California, Irvine – School of Medicine.

Dr. K possesses several additional certifications, including being a California State Licensed Genetic Counselor, a Certified Genetic Counselor from the American Board of Genetic Counseling (ABGC), and a Healthcare Provider CPR and AED training from the American Heart Association | American Stroke Association.

This week’s subject test leverages state-of-the-art DNA sequencing technology, in combination with pattern recognition, to screen for the presence of a cancer signal and localize its most likely origin.^1,11

All cells, non-cancer and cancer, release DNA fragments, known as cell-free DNA (cfDNA), into the blood. Certain cfDNA methylation patterns are associated with cancer and can be considered a cancer signal. DNA methylation is a process used by cells to regulate gene expression.

In cfDNA from cancer, certain regions of DNA are often hypermethylated or hypomethylated and are associated with specific patterns. These abnormal methylation patterns and the resulting change in gene expression can contribute to cancer initiation and progression.