Urine as a liquid biopsy for early stage cancer detection.

Today, most cancers are diagnosed through tactile lesions, imaging techniques, or clinical symptoms. This diagnosis is confirmed by a histopathological examination of a core biopsy of the primary lesion. However, a biopsy is very invasive, quite difficult to obtain and causes great discomfort to the patient. Because tissue (re) biopsy is often a problem, the use of liquid biopsies has become extremely popular in recent years. While the detection of diagnostic, prognostic and predictive biomarkers is generally performed on tissue samples, detection on liquid biopsies shows promise. Currently, liquid biopsy analysis is mainly focused on plasma testing. Compared to tissue tests, blood tests are minimally invasive. While a blood sample is considered minimally invasive, a skilled caregiver is required to draw blood from patients. In addition, the patient's health status may not allow for additional blood draws. Obtaining urine, on the other hand, is non-invasive, does not depend on the health status of the patient, is without limitation on volume or frequency of collection, and can be performed at home or at the physician's office. There is a huge variety of biomarkers in liquid biopsies, including circulating tumor cells (CTCs), cell free nucleic acids (cfNA), exosomes and proteins that show promise for non-invasive testing. Depending on the type of molecule, different "omic" technologies (i.e. genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics) are used to detect them. Realizing the potential of urine as a liquid biopsy requires research into optimal collection methods and storage conditions for the detection of biomarkers. Colli-Pee® was developed by Novosanis and allows to collect urine in a standardized and volumetric way. If collection methods and storage conditions can be standardized, yellow can become the new red and urine can replace or equate blood in cancer detection.

Keywords:EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Disciplines:Cancer biology

Project type:Collaboration project