25 09, 2020

What is Minimal Residual Disease (MRD)?

By | September 25th, 2020|Categories: Early detection, Epigenomics, MRD, Next-generation sequencing|0 Comments

Many of my followers in the cancer space, especially the Hemes folks, will already understand what MRD is and why it’s important. But for those of you who don’t know I thought an explainer might be helpful. I took inspiration from Keiths COVID qPCR explainer and this […]

21 09, 2020

@illumina buys @GrailBio for $8 billion

By | September 21st, 2020|Categories: Diagnostics Tech, Early detection, Next-generation sequencing|1 Comment

Wow Illumina just spent $8 billion buying GRAIL; arguably the leader in methylation-based early detection of cancer with their Galleri test (read the press release). Get more info over at the website they’ve put together for the deal at transformingcancerdetection.com, which includes a presentation that also highlights […]

23 06, 2020

Brain cancer testing without the invasive biopsy from @decarvalho_lab

By | June 23rd, 2020|Categories: Diagnostics Tech, Early detection, Epigenomics|0 Comments

Brain cancer is difficult to diagnose and stratify without an invasive biopsy. Daniel De Carvalho’s group have used their cfChIP-Seq technology to non-invasively diagnose and classify brain tumours, potentially removing the need for surgical tissue biopsies. The power of the assay comes from its use of […]

5 06, 2020

Avida Biomed: early cancer detection with methylation

By | June 5th, 2020|Categories: Diagnostics Tech, Early detection, Epigenomics, MRD|0 Comments

Avida Biomed are an early startup who have developed a novel targeted methylation sequencing technology: Point-n-Seq, for cancer early-detection. Point-n-Seq uses targeted methylation sequencing, which performs enrichment of target molecules directly from cfDNA before bisulfite conversion and amplification. Target panels are small 1-1000 markers. The […]

4 06, 2020

Is MRD detection really possible with 35x coverage of cfDNA?

By | June 4th, 2020|Categories: Early detection, MRD|2 Comments

Ultra-deep & UMI error-corrected sequencing seemed to be the best tool for early cancer detection and MRD. Early detection is now moving to methylation (e.g. GRAIL’s recent CCGA paper) and now MRD is being challenged – this time by 35x WGS sequencing (it’s also being challenged by methylation but that’s for another post).

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