Abstract

Exploiting RNA In Liquid Biopsies For Precision Medicine Purposes

Jo Vandesompele, Professor, Ghent University

In contrast to general belief, a substantial part of the human transcriptome is abundantly present in the blood and other biofluids as extracellular messenger RNA, long non-coding RNAs and various small RNAs, ready to exploited. I will discuss various workflows for RNA sequencing of biofluid derived RNA, including probe-based target capture and unbiased total RNA library prep as sensitive RNA sequencing workflow to study thousands of mRNA and lncRNA genes in cell-free RNA from patients’ plasma and other biofluids. Apart from RNA abundance profiling, this type of data can also be used to detect structural RNA variants, such as somatic mutations, fusion genes and RNA editing events, all known to play an important role in disease, including cancer. The resulting RNA profiles can be deconvoluted to enumerate the cells, tissues and organs that contribute to the extracellular RNA. Human biofluid RNA sequencing enables liquid biopsy guided precision oncology, such as therapy stratification, treatment response monitoring and early detection of relapse. I will also discuss the pre-analytical jungle of RNA targeted liquid biopsies and need for standardization, as part of the ongoing extracellular RNA quality control study. I will end with the first insights of the Human Biofluid RNA Atlas, in which we have deeply probed into the extracellular transcriptome of 22 human biofluids, providing a solid foundation for exploiting biofluids for diagnostic purposes.