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ARTICLE | Preclinical News

Aug. 8 Preclinical Quick Takes: Mayo Clinic assay for residual disease; plus camouflage for bacterial agents, Elicio's KRAS vaccine and more

August 9, 2019 12:13 AM UTC

Mayo Clinic liquid biopsy identifies breast cancer residual disease
A Mayo Clinic team reported in a Science Translational Medicine article that a personalized multiplex sequencing approach called TARDIS (targeted digital sequencing) could accurately distinguish pathological complete response and residual disease following cancer treatment by simultaneously detecting multiple patient-specific cancer mutations in circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA). In nine triple-negative and 11 estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer patients treated with neoadjuvant therapies, the approach correctly identified patients with residual disease with areas under the curve (AUCs) of 1 and 0.89, respectively.

Membrane camouflage for bacterial agents
A Shanghai Jiao Tong University team showed that coating bacteria with erythrocyte membranes could prevent their rapid clearance and inflammatory side effects in vivo. In a Nature Communications paper, the team said that coating an E. coli strain led to a fivefold increase in tumor accumulation of the bacteria in mice, suggesting the approach could be used to improve bacteria-based diagnostics, tumor imaging agents and therapies...