Liquid Biopsy Using Exosome RNA and ctDNA, Realizing the “Holy Grail” of Personalized Medicine
Johan Skog,
Chief Scientific Officer,
Exosome Diagnostics Inc
The field of liquid biopsy has gained an enormous interest the last couple of years. Being able to detect tumor derived genetic profiles and track the evolution of tumor mutations over time has been a long sought after goal of personalized medicine. Utilizing cell free tumor DNA (ctDNA) for detection of mutations in plasma has shown great promise in clinical studies and has even been included in the label as a companion diagnostic for Iressa in Europe when no tissue is available. However, ctDNA analysis suffer from several shortcomings. The copy numbers of ctDNA carrying the mutations are often very low in plasma, limiting the sensitivity of the assay and can also not be used to monitor splice variants and other RNA specific aberrations that are clinically important. Our exosome platform addresses both of these issues. Exosomes are small vesicles that are abundantly shed from tumor cells, and carry RNA from the cell of origin. Mutations are abundantly detected on exosome RNA from plasma, and can also be efficiently used to profile splice variants and fusions.
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