LIQUID BIOPSIES and PERSONALIZED MEDICINE

Hiking in Scotland

More and more one reads bits about “personalized medicine.  Often this means using the patient’s genome to determine what went wrong that resulted in cancer.  (This would seem to require sampling the tumor itself.)  Knowing what went wrong then permits study of just how (the “biochemical pathway”) this particular error results in its malign behavior.  Maybe a drug already exists that mucks up or repairs that pathway: if so, use it.  Or, if no such drug is available, persuade a granting agency or drug company to develop one. 

Well, a useful new application of personalized medical techniques allows oncologists to detect the recurrence of cancer very early and very simply.  First, sequence the tumor DNA and pinpoint the tumor-specific peculiarities.  Then, periodically draw a sample of blood (“liquid biopsy”).  Scan the sample for fragments of tumor DNA.  If they are there, the tumor will recur, If not, it won’t.  This works because solid tumors shed fragments of themselves into the blood stream.  The method appears to work particularly well in cases of ovarian cancer.

Yes, I know this was unusually boring (although not unimportant.)  I am still recovering from the energy-drain occasioned by simply WATCHING my two ggrandkids at play.  At least I got to use a cool two-bit word (malign) as well as an inelegant-but-cheering verb phrase (muck up).  Here is the article:

http://acsh.org/news/2016/07/22/a-big-advance-in-personalized-medicine-ovarian-cancer/