Setting the stage for cancer

Although marketed blood-based diagnostics for leukemia are sufficiently sensitive to monitor minimal residual disease, no such tests exist for solid tumors. Now, German researchers have developed a personalized diagnostic that can stage solid tumors and detect minimal residual disease following therapeutic intervention.¹ However, the approachrequires the design of a unique assay for each patient, which may limit its commercial potential.

Many tumors are characterized by the presence of specific amplified genomic regions. Such regions have been reported to exist in91% of breast cancers, 82% of glioblastomas and 75% of colon cancers.²...