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Several liquid biopsy products have the ability to detect tumor DNA circulating in a patient’s blood, according to an analysis that simulated the sensitivity of these products, provided the genetic variations linked to these cancers are sufficiently numerous in the sample to be captured by the test. The biopsies are much less reliable at detecting signs of cancer as variant frequency declines, which is often the case when a cancer is at an early stage. The study was published April 12 in Nature Biotechnology.
Although the relationship between the proportion of tumorous to healthy DNA in circulation and liquid biopsy performance was already known, this study is unique in that the authors used standardized samples of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) to compare the effectiveness of five research products, produced by Roche, Illumina, Integrated DNA Technologies, Burning Rock Dx, and Thermo Fisher Scientific. While company officials were ...
