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Liquid Biopsy

Liquid Biopsy

An invaluable tool for precision medicine

A liquid biopsy is a simple, noninvasive procedure that uses a peripheral blood draw instead of tissue to access tumor-derived components such as circulating tumor cells (CTCs), circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), tumor-derived extracellular vesicles (tdEVs) and exosomes. Liquid biopsy offers several advantages compared to “conventional” solid tissue biopsy: it is noninvasive, often less costly, and can be repeated over time, thus providing longitudinal information on tumor evolution.

In the era of precision medicine, liquid biopsy holds incredible potential as it can provide valuable and otherwise inaccessible information on the individual patient’s disease over time, and contribute to a more tailored therapeutic approach.

CTCs shed from primary tumor and/or metastatic sites into the bloodstream and reflect real-time changes in tumor biology, with all its phenotypic and genotypic heterogeneity.

Through CTCs, we can access unique biological information about the tumor: enumeration is a direct measure of disease status, while the analysis of phenotypic and genotypic parameters allows to monitor tumor evolution over time.

Despite the recognized importance of CTCs, incorporation into standard screening and treatment guidelines has been challenging due to a number of factors:

  • CTCs are extremely rare in blood (about 1 tumor cell per 1 billion blood cells), which makes them difficult to find and enumerate accurately.
  • FormaSingle CTC molecular characterization requires a high standard of purity in isolation and adequate molecular workflows to avoid bias.

Our Liquid Biopsy workflow for Circulating Tumor Cells

CELLSEARCH®: The most validated CTC enrichment and enumeration technology

The CELLSEARCH system performs ferrofluid-based immunomagnetic capture of EpCAM+ circulating tumor cells which demonstrates high enrichment performance in terms of reproducibility and sensitivity.

The CELLSEARCH system, coupled with the CELLSEARCH CTC kit, identifies a clinically relevant population of CTCs as shown in different clinical studies. The performance of ferrofluid enrichment, coupled with the choice of a stable and reliable marker, led the CELLSEARCH CTC Test to be the first and only FDA cleared test for clinical enumeration of CTC.

Clinical studies have shown that CELLSEARCH-enriched CTCs, defined as EpCAM+/Cytokeratin+/CD45-, are a biomarker with demonstrated clinical significance and their number is prognostic in metastatic Breast, Prostate or Colorectal cancer (For more information on the full intended use and limitations please see the Instructions for Use).



DEPArray™ PLUS: Unlocking the power of liquid biopsy through CTC single cell analysis

CELLSEARCH and DEPArray PLUS together provide an end-to-end workflow solution in cell-based liquid biopsy to study circulating tumor cells in a clinical research setting.

In the research field, CTCs enriched by ferrofluid technology on the CELLSEARCH platform or on the new CellMag can be isolated by DEPArray digital sorting and used for genetic analysis.

The DEPArray PLUS bridges the gap between enriched cells and the pure single cell needed for downstream molecular applications.

The ability to sort and recover individual cells helps overcome the limitations associated with bulk analysis of enriched samples. When combined with single cell whole genome amplification with the Ampli1 kits, more sensitive and reliable profiling of tumor cell populations recovered from a simple blood draw can be achieved.



Publications

Discover recently published articles featuring research enabled by our CELLSEARCH, DEPArray and Ampli1 technologies

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