A new type of blood test for breast cancer could help avoid thousands of unnecessary surgeries and otherwise precisely monitor disease progression, according to a study led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and Mayo Clinic in Arizona.<\/p>\n
The study suggests that the test called TARDIS \u2014 TARgeted DIgital Sequencing \u2014 is as much as 100 times more sensitive than other blood-based cancer monitoring tests.<\/p>\n
TARDIS is a \u201cliquid biopsy\u201d that specifically identifies and quantifies small fragments of cancer DNA circulating in the patient\u2019s bloodstream, known as circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA). According to the study, TARDIS detected ctDNA in as low as 2 parts per 100,000 in patient blood.
\n\u201cBy precisely measuring ctDNA, this test can detect the presence of residual cancer, and inform physicians if cancer has been successfully eradicated by treatment,\u201d said Muhammed Murtaza, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., Assistant Professor and Co-Director of TGen\u2019s Center for Noninvasive Diagnostics. He also holds a joint appointment on the Research Faculty at Mayo Clinic in Arizona, and is one of the study\u2019s senior authors.<\/p>\n
For example, Dr. Murtaza explained, TARDIS is precise enough to tell if early stage breast cancer patients have responded well to pre-operative drug therapy. It is more sensitive than the current method of determining response to drug therapy using imaging.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has enormous implications for women with breast cancer. This test could help plan the timing and extent of surgical resection and radiation therapy after patients have received pre-operative therapy,\u201d said Dr. Barbara A. Pockaj, M.D., a surgical oncologist who specializes in breast and melanoma cancer patients at Mayo Clinic in Arizona, and is the study\u2019s other senior author. Dr. Pockaj is the Michael M. Eisenberg professor of surgery and the chair of the Breast Cancer Interest Group (BIG), a collaboration between researchers at Mayo, TGen and ASU.<\/p>\n
Unlike traditional biopsies, which only produce results from one place at one time, liquid biopsies use a simple blood draw, and so could safely be performed repeatedly, as often as needed, to detect a patient\u2019s disease status.<\/p>\n
\u201cTARDIS is a game changer for response monitoring and residual disease detection in early breast cancer treated with curative intent. The sensitivity and specificity of patient-specific TARDIS panels will allow us to tell very early, probably after one cycle, whether neo-adjuvant (before surgery) therapy is working and will also enable detecting micro-metastatic disease and risk-adapted treatment after completing neo-adjuvant therapy,\u201d said Dr. Caldas, who also is Senior Group Leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, and one of the study\u2019s contributing authors.<\/p>\n
Following further clinical testing and trials, TARDIS could someday be routinely used for monitoring patients during cancer treatment, and discovering when patients are essentially cured and cancer free.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe results of these tests could be used to individualize cancer therapy avoiding overtreatment in some cases and under treatment in others,\u201d Dr. Murtaza said. \u201cThe central premise of our research is whether we can develop a blood test that can tell patients who have been completely cured apart from patients who have residual disease. We wondered whether we can see clearance of ctDNA from blood in patients who respond well to pre-surgical treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Current tests and imaging lack the sensitivity needed to make this determination.<\/p>\n
\u201cFragments of ctDNA shed into blood by tumours carry the same cancer-specific mutations as the tumour cells, giving us a way to measure the tumour,\u201d said Bradon McDonald, a computational scientist in Dr. Murtaza\u2019s lab, and the study\u2019s first author.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem is that ctDNA levels can be so low in non-metastatic cancer patients, there are often just not enough fragments of ctDNA in a single blood sample to reliably detect any one mutation. This is especially true in the residual disease setting, when there is no obvious tumour left during or after treatment,\u201d McDonald said. \u201cSo, instead of focusing on a single mutation from every patient, we decided to integrate the results of dozens of mutations from each patient.\u201d
\nTranslational Genomics Research Institutewww.tgen.org\/news\/2019\/august\/07\/new-ctdna-blood-test-for-cancer\/<\/link>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A new type of blood test for breast cancer could help avoid thousands of unnecessary surgeries and otherwise precisely monitor disease progression, according to a study led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and Mayo Clinic in Arizona. The study suggests that the test called TARDIS \u2014 TARgeted DIgital Sequencing \u2014 is as much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}