Biofluidica announced the results of a breast cancer study comparing invasive needle biopsies with their non-invasive, highly sensitive Next-Generation Liquid Biopsy platform, LiquidScan™ to detect HER2 positive (HER2+) patients. Patients with a HER2+ genetic profile have shown high success rates using personalized HER2-directed targeted therapy. Results of this pilot study (n=16) revealed that current biopsies are missing over 25% of patients that might be eligible for HER2-directed therapy. A larger study is now in preparation that would allow better patient profiling using a non-invasive blood analysis.
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We demonstrated that the use of a new non-invasive liquid biopsy methodology could lead to rapid and accurate identification of HER2 status in patient samples. The results of this study compared more than favorably with the results drawn from needle biopsy. The broader use of LiquidScan strongly indicates the importance of being able to perform liquid biopsy on circulating tumor cells (CTCs) isolated from a blood sample instead of currently performed cancer cells obtained through breast needle biopsies.
As a non-invasive approach to diagnosis, liquid biopsy has seen a meteoric rise in the number of tests and their acceptance, most tests being based on analysis of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) present in blood. Notwithstanding the importance of cfDNA-based tests, many diseases and genetic environments are not amenable to a cfDNA test, due to the size of the DNA marker, the relative concentration of the marker in blood, or a need to explore more within the biology of the disease in question, the importance of being able to analyze at the cellular level has not been lost. The BioFluidica LiquidScan technology provides a next-generation liquid biopsy in which sensitive and accurate analyses can be performed on cells. The study was performed in a collaboration between Biofluidica, Neogenomics (NeoGenomics Laboratories), and Dr. Kay Yeung at the UCSD Moores Cancer Center and UCSD Biorepository & Tissue Technology Shared Resource, and the findings will be shown at the Precision Medicine World Conference 2022 in Santa Clara June 28-30 (Booth D3820).
Rolf Muller, CEO, of BioFluidica, stated that “Our hope with LiquidScan is to be able to facilitate and revolutionize disease research and management. Thanks to its flexibility, LiquidScan can be readily adapted for several applications. The platform is ideal for those applications where the ability to conduct frequent tests and deliver results quickly where point-of-care testing is critical. I am especially excited that we might be able to find more patients that could be eligible for improved therapy using the high sensitivity LiquidScan™ Next-Generation Liquid Biopsy platform