INNOVATION | Tumor DNAs circulate?
- medpod
- Jun 16, 2020
- 2 min read
“to discuss the latest medical breakthroughs and make new connections to spark future awe-inspiring innovations”
Tumor DNAs circulate!?
Dying cancer cells shed their DNA into the person’s bloodstream and we can find them by “liquid biopsies” that will uncover the signs of these actual cell- free DNAs (ctDNA) of tumor cells.
This innovation pick for 2017 is a prominent way that may gain scientific and commercial success as it would help the development of cancer screening tests just from a simple blood draw. It has a problems with the detectable amounts in the blood being vanishingly obscured by the healthy DNA, however this cn be overcomed by the annual repeats of the “liquid biopsy” test.
Use of tumor DNA instead of the circulating tumor itself is important as this ctDNA is more than 100 times more abundant in the blood that the tumor cells itself.
For the screening of cancer, liquid biopsies could be a way to help people already fighting the disease as the doctors could pick a drug according to the specific DNA mutation driving the cancer forward from the tumors.
This approach relies on the decoding of short fragments of DNA that are loose in the bloodstream. The results then would be compared with the reference map of the human genome for the spoting of specific DNA patterns that are the pre-signs of a tumor.
Although the studies for this revolutionary cancer test are still underway, the annual sales are dclared to be $10 billion, which is a big costly ticket.
However it is still in demand as it offers early detection of cancer types which is one of the most appreciated and most notable successes in applying technology to cut deaths from common cancers in US. Liquid biopsy is being hailed as a flagship technology of the federal government’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative.
For the visual demonstration of the innovation:
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