Lung cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths in South Korea and globally. Most lung cancer patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage and often respond poorly to treatment. Therefore, there is a growing demand for new screening technologies for the early detection of lung cancer. Against this backdrop, South Korea’s oncology tests market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of over 2% between 2023 and 2030, forecasts GlobalData, a leading data, and analytics company.

GlobalData’s research reveals that South Korea’s oncology tests market accounts for over 11% of the Asia-Pacific (APAC) market in 2023.

South Korea-based biotech company Aptamer Sciences Inc has recently formally begun non-reimbursed testing of AptoDetect-Lung, a blood-based early detection tool for lung cancer, at tertiary hospitals. This is expected to address the gap of the country’s inadequate availability of in vitro diagnostic technologies for the early lung cancer detection.

Shreya Jain, Medical Devices Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Due to the limitations and high cost of conventional lung cancer detection techniques, blood-based diagnostic techniques with multiple indicators, such as AptoDetect-Lung, are gaining attention. The advantages such as higher diagnostic power of multivariate biomarkers may evoke a positive and stronger preference over other methods.”

The survival rate of lung cancer remains largely unchanged in South Korea, even after the 2019 implementation of the national lung cancer screening program with low-dose computed tomography (LDCT). Due to false-positive screens and resultant diagnostic procedures, over-diagnosed cancers, and radiation exposure, the performance of LDCT screening in clinical practice often falls short.

Jain concludes: “The integration of novel multiple biomarker blood tests in lung cancer diagnosis and the recognition of their clinical utility may offer a rational alternative to conventional methods. However, further research is needed on how to optimize their specificity and sensitivity.”