Molecular Pathology Selected Abstracts, 2/17
February 2017—Concordance between liquid biopsy and patient-matched tumor molecular testing: The use of sequence analyses of extended panels of genes to identify therapeutic targets in cancer is becoming commonplace. These assays typically rely on the availability of tissue biopsies as a source of genomic material, which can become a limitation in situations where insufficient tissue is available or an invasive procedure to collect tissue is impractical. A potential solution to this dilemma is the use of a blood-based, or liquid biopsy, approach, in which a peripheral blood sample is used as a source of tumor-derived genomic material, either in the form of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) or via circulating tumor cells (ctcDNA).