Cancer Genome Research

Liquid Biopsy for noninvasive tumor monitoring

We have augmented and extended our liquid biopsy approaches towards the establishment and application of liquid biopsy technologies for tumor monitoring and detection of minimal residual disease (MRD). To this end, we used ca. 500 longitudinal plasma samples from ALK-fusion-positive lung cancer patients (cooperation with the Thoraxklinik Heidelberg) as a proof of principle study to:

• determine single nucleotide variants (SNVs) and copy number variants in plasma DNA,
• correlate molecular data with clinical parameters like oligoprogression,
• show that the molecular lead time to progression under therapy is shorter compared to radiological lead time,
• identify epigenomic variants to detection tumor progression and MRD.

Further resources: 

Tumoren mittels Blutprobe auf der Spur: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpGLAdQBCdk

Methods for ctDNA detection and analysis: https://youtu.be/pwK1BTlQl6w

Cooperations: 

• Div. of Oncology, Thoraxklinik Heidelberg
• Dept. of Pathology at Heidelberg University Medical Center
• Div. of Gynecological Oncology, NCT Heidelberg
• Div. of Molecular Genetics, DKFZ Heidelberg
• Div. of Radiooncology, Heidelberg University Medical Center
• Div. of Medical Oncology and Institute for Nutritional Medicine, University Clinic Schleswig Holstein, Campus Lübeck

Support: German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) in the funding programs German Centers for Lung Research (DZL), OUTLIVE-CRC, and SATURN³