Donald L. Johann Jr., M.D., an associate professor in the UAMS departments of Biomedical Informatics and Internal Medicine and principal investigator of an FDA clinical trial to develop an advanced method for diagnosing and monitoring lung cancer with a simple blood test, reported Nov. 30 in Oncology Live that investigators at the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute have made big strides in so-called liquid biopsies over the last five years. Johann and other researchers around the world earlier reported their validation of the processes for using the technique to detect cancer. They noted that the less invasive approach, compared to tissue biopsies, can detect large tumors and metastatic cancers with about 100% accuracy.
“We can find circulating DNA (ctDNA), which are nucleic acid biomolecules shed by a tumor into the blood and detected by next-generation sequencing,” he said in the November article. “Investigators at UAMS are now working to translate foundational work into cutting-edge care for patients with cancer at all stages of disease and across tumor types and eventually for screening assays.”