The new platform offers custom panel manufacturing in as little as one day to support development of tumor-informed MRD assays.
Twist Bioscience Corporation has launched Twist MRD Express, a service providing custom panels manufactured at scale with manufacturing turnaround times as short as one day. The panels are designed to assist cancer researchers in evaluating tumor-associated genomic variants and supporting oncology research, biomarker discovery, and assay development.
In developing molecular residual disease (MRD) assays, researchers typically select between two methodologies: tumor-informed testing, which identifies recurrence by tracking a patient’s specific tumor variants, or tumor-naïve testing, which screens across shared biomarkers common to a specific cancer type. Although tumor-informed tests offer higher analytical sensitivity, development timelines have historically been longer because of panel personalization requirements. The new panels aim to deliver personalized, tumor-informed designs on turnaround timelines comparable to tumor-naïve options.
“To understand how cancer is responding at the molecular level, researchers need workflows that move as quickly as their questions demand,” says Emily M. Leproust, CEO and co-founder of Twist Bioscience, in a release. “With personalized Twist MRD Express panels we are eliminating the tradeoff researchers need to make between sensitivity and speed, enabled by enhancements to our manufacturing and automation processes within our existing high-throughput environment. Importantly, as MRD providers scale, their supply chains need to keep pace. Our platform is built to support that growth, giving customers confidence to plan beyond today’s testing volumes.”
Panel Design and High-Throughput Specifications
The Twist MRD Express panels can incorporate up to 10,000 probes per design, utilizing high oligonucleotide uniformity. The panels incorporate modified bases, including locked nucleic acids, which can further improve sequencing sensitivity.
The workflow supports assay developers through bioinformatics panel design assistance, an e-commerce platform, and touchless application programming interface ordering. The panels leverage Twist’s silicon-based DNA synthesis platform, which manufactures large volumes of customized probes in parallel to accommodate scaling testing volumes.
The offering expands Twist’s portfolio of liquid biopsy and MRD tools, which also includes the Twist cfDNA Library Preparation Kit with TrueAmp Polymerase Mix and the Twist cfDNA Pan-Cancer Reference Standard v2.
Photo caption: Twist MRD Express
Photo credit: Twist Bioscience
