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| James Koziarz, PhD |
Rubicon Genomics Inc, Ann Arbor, Mich, reported that its ThruPLEXTM-FD Prep Kits contributed to the success of a study recently published in Nature.
The [removed]study[/removed] showed that genomic data extracted from the plasma of cancer patients can be used to track drug resistance and potentially guide treatment.
“Obtaining usable DNA from patient samples can be difficult,” says James Koziarz, PhD, CEO. “ThruPLEX-FD Prep Kits are designed to produce high quality DNA from challenging patient samples, including noninvasive samples such as plasma, and they do so rapidly and efficiently.”
By sequencing tumor exomes extracted from patient plasma samples, researchers showed it is possible to track how metastatic cancer evolves to acquire resistance to cancer therapy.
Using plasma samples taken during multiple courses of treatment, the researchers derived tumor sequences in patients with advanced breast, lung, and ovarian cancers. They were able to identify mutations associated with the emergence of resistance to cancer drugs including cisplatin, tamoxifen, and gefitinib.
This noninvasive “liquid biopsy,” offers important advantages and could complement current invasive biopsy methods that can be uncomfortable and costly.
ThruPLEX-FD Prep Kits are designed to provide sensitive and consistent sequencing from challenging samples containing small amounts of degraded DNA with minimum hands-on time.
For this study, the scientists used ThruPlex-FD to prepare libraries from very small quantities of circulating DNA extracted from plasma (as small as 2.3 ng of DNA.)
After enriching for the exome fraction, pair-end sequencing of the samples were performed on an Illumina HiSeq 2500.
[Source: Rubicon Genomics]
