liquid biopsy

Circulating Nucleic Acids in Human Biofluids and Liquid Biopsy Research

Posted on by Douglas Horejsh

Several different types of nucleic acids can be found circulating in human biofluids. Fragmented DNA and RNA are now routinely purified from plasma and other bodily fluids. These types of nucleic acids need to be purified from a cell-free fraction of the biofluids to ensure that the isolated nucleic acids are truly circulating and not from intact cells. In this blog post, we will learn a bit more about circulating nucleic acids (CNA) and how they can be used as biomarkers in research.

Continue reading “Circulating Nucleic Acids in Human Biofluids and Liquid Biopsy Research”

Big Data. Bigger Hope.

Posted on by Isobel Maciver

Research Cancer diagnosis from blood dropA paper published last week in Cancer Cell describes a new method for cancer detection from a simple blood sample. So far, one limitation of this type of non-invasive “liquid biopsy” for early detection of cancer has been the inability to identify the nature of the primary tumor. This new method, based on sequencing mRNA from platelets, overcomes this limitation in spectacular fashion—providing accurate identification of the primary tumor location in 71% of the samples tested.

Human blood platelets contain small amounts of mRNA. The RNA profile of “tumor-educated” platelets changes in response to tumor growth as the platelets take up mRNA from tumor cells. In this study, the authors sequenced the platelet mRNA of various cancer patients and healthy donors, and then searched for cancer-associated expression profiles. Continue reading “Big Data. Bigger Hope.”