Biodesix Inc, Boulder, Colo, has recently presented data demonstrating the ability of the company’s droplet digital PCR (ddPCR)-based platform to reliably detect an extended series of EGFR exon 19 deletion (del19) variants in the blood of patients with lung cancer. The data were presented in a poster session at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).1

Brunel

David Brunel, Biodesix.

“Our partners at biopharmaceutical companies have found that blood-based molecular testing can speed the development of and patient access to effective therapies,” says David Brunel, Biodesix CEO. “By adding other variants that can be detected by our platform, we expect to facilitate more clinical studies by our partners.”

The company’s platform has previously been used in the Aura study by Astra-Zeneca. Findings from that study were presented at the 2017 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.2

The study presented at AACR evaluated the analytical performance and clinical development of a single assay that can detect up to 15 EGFR del19 variants, while maintaining a rapid turnaround time. With minimal changes to the existing workflow of the company’s GeneStrat test, the investigators achieved an analytic limit of detection of 0.02% in a background of normal wild-type DNA.

The study was conducted on both clinical and analytical datasets. Clinical concordance with the GeneStrat test was 100%. Total turnaround time for the test remains 72 hours or less.

For more information, visit Biodesix.

References

  1. Mellert H, Jackson L, Alexander K, et al. Highly multiplexed diagnostic test for the detection of extended EGFR del19 variants in patients with NSCLC [abstract, online]. Poster 5573/5 presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, Chicago, April 14–18, 2018. Available at: www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/4562/presentation/2878. Accessed May 28, 2018.
  1. Thress KS, Markovets A, Barrett JC, et al. Complete clearance of plasma EGFR mutations as a predictor of outcome on osimertinib in the Aura trial [abstract, online]. Poster 9018 presented at the 2017 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Chicago, June 2–7, 2017. Available at: https://meetinglibrary.asco.org/record/145475/abstract. Accessed May 28, 2018.