Overview

• Researchers at Mass General Brigham report that HPV-DeepSeek detected tumor-derived HPV DNA in 22 of 28 people who later developed cancer, with all 28 control samples testing negative.
• Machine-learning applied to whole-genome sequencing data increased detection to 27 of 28 cases and revealed signals as far as roughly a decade before diagnosis, with the earliest non-AI signal at 7.8 years.
• The findings, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, describe a liquid biopsy that searches blood for fragments of viral DNA associated with HPV-driven tumors.
• The NIH has initiated a larger validation effort with several hundred samples to evaluate reproducibility across broader populations and to gauge clinical utility.
• The test is not ready for routine screening, although HPV accounts for a large share of U.S. head and neck cancers and there is currently no established blood test for early detection.