2019-06-07 by Quick Biology Inc.
Liquid Biopsy is the sampling and analysis of biofluids, primarily blood. It is revolutionizing oncology, an innovative solution to cancer detection. Compared to traditional solid tissue biopsies, it has “easily obtained, minimal pain/risk” etc advantages (Figure 1). However, due to (1) high false-negative rate --- most of the cells in the liquid biopsy are normal cells; (2) cannot know tissue source --- primary and second cancer cells both are released to blood, liquid biopsy is not yet ready to entirely replace standard invasive tissue biopsy. Thanks to the low cost, high speed and genome-wide screening using next-generation sequencing, liquid biopsy is more and more popular in either diagnose disease, especially in tracking disease progression throughout a patient’s life or treatment course in recent years (ref2, ref3).
Figure 1: Comparison of Biopsy Method (from ref 1)
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See resource:
- 1. Gen News: https://www.genengnews.com/topics/translational-medicine/liquid-biopsy-predicts-colon-cancer-recurrence/81252922/
- 2. “Liquid Biopsies: Past, Present, and Future”: https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/liquid-biopsies-past-present-future.html
- 3. Liquid Biopsy in the clinical management of Breast, Lung, and Colorectal Cancer. Front Med 2018:5:9. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5797586/