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Project

Development of a multi-region methylation blood based test for pan-cancer detection.

Early and accurate detection of cancer has great potential to reduce mortality, as treatment is often more successful in early stages. The currently used methods for cancer detection and screening have important limitations such as low sensitivity in early stages and invasiveness. There is a clear need for new minimally invasive, costeffective and sensitive diagnostic tests that are also capable of early cancer detection for all cancer types. Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) methylation biomarkers have the potential to be used in such minimally invasive tests for cancer diagnosis. Further studies are however required to improve the insufficient sensitivity and specificity of methylation ctDNA (MetctDNA) based tests. Digital droplet PCR is the golden standard for ctDNA analysis. However, the need for DNA damaging bisulfite conversion and limited targets that can be multiplexed are important disadvantages. Currently no cost effective, efficient and sensitive techniques exists for the analysis of multiple methylation sites in ctDNA. To remediate this, we have obtained in our lab a proof of concept for a sensitive, multi-region MetctDNA based bisulfite-free detection technique. The general aim of this project is to develop this technique into a pan-cancer detection assay. A high sensitivity and pan-cancer performance is expected to be reached by combining 1000 methylation biomarkers with this technique.
Date:1 Nov 2019 →  30 Oct 2020
Keywords:EPIGENETICS
Disciplines:Epigenetics, Molecular diagnostics
Project type:Collaboration project