Revolutionizing cancer relapse detection through innovative synthetic biology and advanced biosensing
Cancer is one of the most urgent health crises of our time. According to the World Health Organization, more than 19 million new cancer cases were diagnosed in 2022, leading to nearly 10 million million deaths. By 2040, this burden is expected to rise to 28 million new cases annually, driven by population growth, aging, and lifestyle-related risk factors.
Cancer does not affect only individuals; it affects entire families and communities. The economic cost of cancer worldwide now exceeds $1 trillion every year when medical expenses, lost productivity, and long-term disability are combined. For patients, the disease often entails months or years of treatments, hospital visits, and side effects that can drastically impact quality of life.
Initial treatment can bring cancer under control, but for too many patients the fight does not end there. Relapse, the return or regrowth of cancer after a period of remission, remains one of the biggest obstacles to improving survival.
30-50%
Relapse within 5 years
For many solid tumors and hematologic cancers, 30–50% of patients relapse within five years of initial therapy. In some subtypes, such as certain leukemias, relapse rates are even higher.
2-3x
Higher mortality risk
Recurrent cancers tend to evolve resistance mechanisms that make them harder to treat and more likely to metastasize.
70%
Report anxiety
Patients live under constant fear of recurrence, and families experience renewed anxiety and financial stress.
$150K+
Average relapse cost
Each relapse episode requires fresh diagnostics, new lines of therapy, and often more expensive drugs or hospital stays.
In short, relapse is the main reason cancer still wins. Without effective ways to detect and intercept recurrence early, even the best initial treatments may only buy time rather than deliver long-term cures.
Oncologists currently rely on a mix of surveillance methods after initial treatment
The mainstay of follow-up care, but these tools detect only macroscopic changes. Minimal residual disease remains invisible.
Oncologists currently rely on a mix of surveillance methods after initial treatment
The mainstay of follow-up care, but these tools detect only macroscopic changes. Minimal residual disease remains invisible.
Oncologists currently rely on a mix of surveillance methods after initial treatment
The mainstay of follow-up care, but these tools detect only macroscopic changes. Minimal residual disease remains invisible.
There is an urgent need for a new class of relapse detection technology that is:
At detecting minimal residual disease that conventional methods miss.
Patients can be monitored frequently without harm or discomfort.
Works with different cancer types and biomarkers for broad applicability.
Easy to integrate into routine clinical workflows, even in low-resource settings.
These gaps are now filled with TRACER's innovative approach
TRACER aims to create a next-generation platform for ultra-early, non-invasive detection of cancer relapse by combining synthetic biology with advanced biosensing.
Explore the sections below to discover how TRACER works, from our engineering approach and experimental results to our community engagement and the impact we aim to achieve.