Liquid Biopsy: Golden Era of Personalized Medicine in Oncology
Cancer treatment has undergone a paradigm shift in today’s era, wherein through genomics intervention, targeted and personalized therapy approaches have gained popularity to ensure greater benefit for the affected. Targeted therapies have dramatically changed the way cancer patients were and are being treated through the past decade till today. The use of tumor tissues for genomic profiling, often provides only a snapshot; apart from the difficulty in obtaining them. Other factors like tumor heterogeneity, clonal evolution and selection contribute towards acquirement of tumor resistance towards systematic treatment. The need to identify an equally efficient yet a costeffective and rapid biomarker, initiated the use of cell-free circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) as a potential surrogate marker. The current review is directed towards exploring the diagnostic, prognostic as well as predictive potential of ctDNA (liquid biopsy) in cancer. All biological and technical aspects covering recent advances pertaining to analytical sensitivity and accuracy have been put forth. In spite of the big promise ctDNA holds, its routine use for clinical application is still not widespread. Requirement to harmonize the pre-analytical and analytical processes along with setting up of standards to validate the role of liquid biopsy as an efficient clinical marker is the need.
Gowhar Shafi, Sandhya Iyer, Shruti Desai, Madhura Basavalingegowda, Shubham Kavishwar,Rambaksh Prajapati, Chandrani Achari and Prajakta Kadam
To read the full article Download Full Article | Visit Full Article
Menu