Carl Borrebaeck
Professor
Implementing liquid biopsies into clinical decision making for cancer immunotherapy
Author
Summary, in English
During the last decade, novel immunotherapeutic strategies, in particular antibodies directed against immune checkpoint inhibitors, have revolutionized the treatment of different malignancies leading to an improved survival of patients. Identification of immune-related biomarkers for diagnosis, prognosis, monitoring of immune responses and selection of patients for specific cancer immunotherapies is urgently required and therefore areas of intensive research. Easily accessible samples in particular liquid biopsies (body fluids), such as blood, saliva or urine, are preferred for serial tumor biopsies. Although monitoring of immune and tumor responses prior, during and post immunotherapy has led to significant advances of patients' outcome, valid and stable prognostic biomarkers are still missing. This might be due to the limited capacity of the technologies employed, reproducibility of results as well as assay stability and validation of results. Therefore solid approaches to assess immune regulation and modulation as well as to follow up the nature of the tumor in liquid biopsies are urgently required to discover valuable and relevant biomarkers including sample preparation, timing of the collection and the type of liquid samples. This article summarizes our knowledge of the well-known liquid material in a new context as liquid biopsy and focuses on collection and assay requirements for the analysis and the technical developments that allow the implementation of different high-throughput assays to detect alterations at the genetic and immunologic level, which could be used for monitoring treatment efficiency, acquired therapy resistance mechanisms and the prognostic value of the liquid biopsies.
Department/s
- BioCARE: Biomarkers in Cancer Medicine improving Health Care, Education and Innovation
- Create Health
Publishing year
2017
Language
English
Pages
48507-48520
Publication/Series
Oncotarget
Volume
8
Issue
29
Document type
Journal article review
Publisher
Impact Journals
Topic
- Cancer and Oncology
- Clinical Laboratory Medicine
Keywords
- Biomarker
- High throughput analysis
- Immunotherapy
- Liquid biopsy
- Tumor
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1949-2553