Bringing NGS to the Clinic: What Can We Expect?

Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT) speaks with Dr Elaine Mardis, an expert in DNA sequencing, institute Co-director, and Director of Technology Development at The Genome Institute (Washington University, St Louis, MO, USA), in the most recent edition of the IDT newsletter DECODED. The interview discusses the rising use of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), with particular emphasis on its role in cancer care, and reveals how IDT xGen™ Lockdown™ Probes have offered Dr Mardis an effective solution for exome sequencing and target capture in her lab. She also shares her perspective on possible future developments in NGS and the challenges to be overcome before we see its routine implementation in the clinic.

Within the article Dr Mardis refers to the significant potential of NGS for disease detection and monitoring, and the subsequent impact on patient care. She explains, “NGS gives us this great advantage of generating data that is very comprehensive, yet available to us in a very short timeframe”. This extensive, patient specific data is key, particularly for individuals suffering with cancer, as it allows diagnoses and the subsequent implementation of personalized treatment plans based on the genomic make-up of the malignancy. However, such extensive data production also poses a hurdle, placing extreme demands on computational resources and bioinformatics expertise for data analysis and medical interpretation.

Throughout the interview Dr Mardis raises further interesting avenues for the future progression and implementation of NGS in the clinic. To read more, access the complete article in this quarter’s edition of DECODED.