by Liquid biopsy is a non-invasive blood test that allows detection of cancer DNA or RNA circulating in a patient’s bloodstream. When cancer cells die, they release DNA and RNA fragments into the blood that can potentially be analyzed to detect tumors and guide treatment decisions. This provides an alternative to invasive tissue biopsies which require surgical procedures to obtain tumor samples.
How Liquid Biopsy Works
In a Liquid Biopsy test, a blood sample is drawn from the patient’s arm in a simple and routine manner. The blood sample is then analyzed using specialized molecular techniques to detect any circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) or circulating tumor cells (CTCs) that may be present. ctDNA originates from tumors and contains genetic mutations specific to that tumor. CTCs are intact cancer cells that have shed from tumors into the bloodstream.
Advanced molecular techniques like digital polymerase chain reaction (PCR), next-generation sequencing, and microfluidics are used to analyze blood samples for any tumor-specific genetic alterations. PCR helps amplify any rare DNA fragments present in blood while next-generation sequencing maps the full DNA sequence to pinpoint cancer-related mutations. Microfluidic cell capture devices can isolate rare CTCs from blood for further analysis.
Potential Clinical Applications
Liquid biopsy holds great promise for improving cancer screening, diagnosis, treatment monitoring and surveillance. Some key potential applications include:
– Early Cancer Detection: Detecting cancers at earliest stages before symptoms appear by monitoring for ctDNA in blood of asymptomatic individuals. This could enable earlier treatment interventions.
– Diagnosing Tumor Origin: Determining the primary site of a cancer when it has metastasized by analyzing mutation profiles in ctDNA to match signatures of different cancer types.
– Treatment Monitoring: Tracking ctDNA levels serially during and after therapy to closely monitor treatment response and detect relapse earlier than conventional imaging. This enables timely interventions.
– Guiding Treatment Decisions: Using mutation data from liquid biopsies to select targeted therapies and personalized treatment regimens tailored to a patient’s tumor molecular profile.
– Detecting Resistance Mechanisms: Identifying new mutations that emerge with acquisition of resistance to first-line therapies. This guides selection of optimal subsequent treatment lines.
Advantages over Tissue Biopsies
Liquid biopsies offer several advantages compared to traditional tissue biopsies:
– Non-Invasive and Minimally stressful: Unlike biopsies requiring surgery or invasive procedures, liquid biopsies involve simple blood draws which are less stressful for patients. This makes frequent monitoring more feasible.
– Real-Time Monitoring: Liquid biopsies can track tumor evolution and response to therapies by repeated blood draws, while tissue biopsies only provide a snapshot in time. This enables real-time treatment guidance.
– Represents Whole Tumor Burden: Analyzing ctDNA circulating in blood provides a sample of multiple tumor sites, unlike tissue biopsies which sample only one lesion. This offers a better representation of overall tumor heterogeneity and clonal evolution.
– Easier to Obtain Samples: It is sometimes challenging or risky to access tumor tissues, but liquid biopsies provide samples easily and safely through routine blood draws. This is important for difficult to biopsy tumors.
Challenges and Limitations
Despite great promise, liquid biopsies still face some challenges that need to be addressed:
– Low ctDNA Concentrations: Detecting rare ctDNA fragments requires highly sensitive techniques as ctDNA usually constitutes only a tiny fraction of total blood DNA. This poses challenges in some early or small tumors.
– Distinguishing tumor from normal cfDNA: Patients naturally have cell-free DNA (cfDNA) from non-tumor sources in blood, and separating tumor from normal cfDNA sequences can be difficult.
– Inter-tumor and Intra-tumor heterogeneity: Mutations vary between different tumor sites in a patient as well as between cancer cells within a single tumor. A blood test may not reflect full mutation profile.
– Limited analytical validation: While early studies show promise, larger clinical validation studies are still needed for most liquid biopsy applications before standard adoption.
– Turnaround times and costs: Most liquid biopsy tests currently have turnaround times of weeks and costs ranging from a few hundred to over $1000 per test, which are barriers to widespread clinical use.
*Note:
1. Source: Coherent Market Insights, Public sources, Desk research
2. We have leveraged AI tools to mine information and compile it
