A group at the Institute of Cancer Research recently published the validation of a Nonacus pan-cancer sequencing panel for liquid biopsy molecular diagnostics which could be used to profile tumor DNA in the blood of paediatric cancer patients. This opens up the possibility to routinely sample patients, monitoring their response to treatment and following their disease progression, to detect relapse as early as possible.
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Posts by Victoria Sutcliffe
Liquid Biopsy: The Future Of Minimal Residual Disease Detection
The assessment of post-treatment minimal residual disease remains challenging clinically as current gold-standard methods do not exhibit sufficient sensitivity and specificity’. This wastes precious time where using a more sensitive and informative method such as liquid biopsy may allow the clinician to act earlier and stratify treatment more appropriately to enhance patient outcomes.
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Detecting multiple respiratory viruses with a single qRT-PCR assay
As some of the symptoms of COVID-19 overlap with flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a negative COVID test result doesn’t always give the full picture of infection. Testing for multiple respiratory viruses in one simple qRT-PCR test could be the answer.
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Unique molecular identifiers: the key to unmasking real low frequency variants
How molecular barcodes help remove PCR and sequencing errors that can mask important low-frequency variations in the analysis of cell-free DNA.
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Tumour Mutational Burden (TMB) and Microsatellite Instability (MSI) as markers for immunotherapy response
Immune-checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapies have heralded promise of a superior drug response and significantly increased survival for a small proportion of cancer patients across a range of cancers.
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Liquid biopsies: epigenetic clues for early cancer detection
Cancer is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality globally. Despite early diagnosis and treatment being one of the most effective methods to improve outcomes for cancer patients, early detection remains challenging.
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Tracking the evolution of SARS CoV-2 using Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS)
Rapid whole viral genome sequencing, decoding a pathogen’s entire genome, is essential to public health organisations and epidemiologists for tracking and surveillance of disease outbreaks.
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