What is a Liquid Biopsy and how is it Used to Help Patients with Cancer?
Simply stated, a liquid biopsy is essentially a simple blood test. But that’s not all. With today’s advanced technology we can now examine the blood of cancer patients with unprecedented accuracy and sensitivity to detect important features of the disease that can be extremely helpful to better plan treatment.
Blood is a very complex tissue, it contains may living cells that include red blood cells that carry the hemoglobin and oxygen and white blood cells that act as the protectors of the body and marshal the immune response.
In patients where cancer is spreading, the cancer cells actually enter the blood system and circulate through the body. When a liquid biopsy is performed, these circulating cancer cells are isolated and characterized. This process can give information about how much cancer is present in the patient and also if the cancer has changed in any way. Knowing If a cancer has changed is important to better plan treatment. For example a patient who initially has breast cancer which was HER2 negative might discover that the cancer has changed to become HER2 positive, which opens the possibility to consider using an anti HER2 therapy. In addition, the ability to measure the number of tumor cells in the blood can help determine if the cancer is actually responding to a treatment or if it has recurred after a period of remission.
Protean BioDiagnostics is working on improving access to liquid biopsies for cancer patients and also working to improve this technology to make it faster, efficient and more accurate and informative.
Dr Magliocco is Founder and CEO of Protean BioDiagnostics, a company with a mission to improve access to precision diagnostics for all patients. Dr Magliocco is a Professor of Oncology and Pathology with special expertise in pathology, cancer diagnostics and precision oncology.