Advances in Liquid Biopsies: Improving Sensitivity and Earlier Detection

Retrieve More Information From Limited DNA Discover how to obtain multi-modal information from liquid biopsies. View Poster Advertisement Liquid biopsies work by detecting ctDNA or CTCs circulating in the bloodstream, but these only occur in small amounts and for the briefest of time before they are cleared by the body, so it is challenging to develop tests sensitive enough to detect them .2 “Diagnostics that use liquid biopsies require detecting very minute quantities of biological molecules associated with the disease or progression,” explained Professor J. Christopher Love, the Raymond A. and Helen E. St. Laurent Professor of Chemical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a member of the Koch Institute and the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard. “One example is cell-free DNA…Most cell-free DNA is released from dying cells and is degraded naturally by multiple mechanisms, including cellular uptake by liver cells and digestion by DNA nucleases. A small portion of this DNA can originate from tumors (usually ~ 1% or less); this DNA may contain mutations or variations that indicate the presence of cancer. One challenge for these tests is that the amount of tumor-derived DNA in one or two tubes of blood may be too small to detect reliably.” Most efforts to improve the sensitivity of liquid biopsies tend to focus on developing new sequencing technologies to use after the blood is drawn .2 Professor Love and colleagues from MIT and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have developed a way to significantly enhance the sensitivity of liquid biopsies by slowing down the clearance of tumor DNA from the bloodstream, before blood is drawn.