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Recent technical advances in molecular analysis
What are the challenges that liquid biopsy is facing to its implementation in clinical routine?
- Lack of standardised protocols.
- Several methodologies for instance could be employed for isolating CTCs. which one to use? Which one will give an accurate representation of the CTC population for a given disease/cancer?
- Need to continue to understand the biology of CTC and circulating free nucleic acids and exosomes.
- Variability of CTCs and cfDNA/RNA/miRNA and exosomes levels across patients.
- A major hurdle in CTCs analysis is their low level of presence in blood making their isolation for genomic profiling a major challenge.
- Bioinformatics challenges to analysis the CTCs and CF nucleic acids by NGS in routine NHS
- Challenges to use dPCR for CTCs and ctDNA. Although dPCR has the potential for quantifying molecules on the single cell level, its efficacy remains reliant on the quality and efficiency of upstream processes such as sample quality, target quantity, nucleic acid extraction method, inhibitors and assay design.