New Liquid Biopsy Data at ASCO Highlights Commercial Push Into Early Cancer Detection

As the clinical applications for liquid biopsy testing begin to widen in the cancer space, biotech companies have started to further invest in DNA fragmentation- and methylation-based platforms to detect a variety of early-stage cancers.

At the American Society of Clinical Oncology virtual annual meeting last week, some firms presented data on different techniques to analyze a patient’s blood sample for epigenetic modifications, in particular DNA methylation, in their circulating tumor DNA, or ctDNA.

Methylation analysis is commonly accomplished by chemically treating cell-free DNA, or cfDNA, with sodium bisulfite to convert unmethylated cytosine to uracil and identifying changes with next-generation sequencing.

Source: https://www.genomeweb.com/liquid-biopsy/new-liquid-biopsy-data-asco-highlights-commercial-push-early-cancer-detection#.YMi5ZKhKiUk