Liquid Biopsy

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Advantages

An advantage of liquid biopsies is that it is a minimally invasive technique [1, 2]. It may be used to detect a range of gene fusions (ALK, RET, ROS and NTRK1 gene fusions) in ctDNA extracted from plasma, serum, circulating tumour cells, platelets and exosomes [1, 3]. In addition, liquid biopsies can be performed over time during treatment and therefore can be used more easily than tissue biopsy for detecting tumour heterogeneity, as for example, molecular alterations arising during tumour and clonal evolution and those driving acquired resistance.

References

1. Aguado C, Gimenez-Capitan A, Karachaliou N et al. Fusion gene and splice variant analyses in liquid biopsies of lung cancer patients. Transl Lung Cancer Res 2016; 5: 525-531.
2. Arneth B. Update on the types and usage of liquid biopsies in the clinical setting: a systematic review. BMC Cancer 2018; 18: 527.
3. Lee JK, Hazar-Rethinam M, Decker B, et al. The Pan-Tumor Landscape of Targetable Kinase Fusions in Circulating Tumor DNA. Clin Cancer Res. 2022; 28(4):728-737.