Why More Clinical Labs Are Turning to Whole-Genome Sequencing for Cancer - Seite 3

The bulk of available MRD data is on risk stratification, which is also its major use case. The technology is in its early stages, and standardization across providers in reporting and quantification is the subject of partnerships in various international consortia.

This year, Illumina announced collaborations with Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine and Bristol Myers Squibb to innovate on our MRD research assay, currently under development on a whole-genome backbone. The WGS MRD research assay will detect ctDNA for MRD assessment, allowing researchers to study cancer samples across multiple solid tumor indications. In contrast with existing MRD solutions with complex workflows, Illumina plans to develop a distributable clinical solution that will provide a cost-effective, highly sensitive, and automated workflow, with the potential to achieve a turnaround time of five to seven days.

Collaborations with Roche, Pillar Biosciences, and many other oncology partnerships are helping build Illumina's portfolio of in vitro and companion diagnostics. With so many tests in development, it's paramount that the assays and instruments remain accessible and all-purpose. Illumina technology supports many stages across the cancer continuum and enables its users to provide solutions that aid in the management of cancer patients from research and early discovery to clinical care and beyond. This has been advantageous for large institutions using multiple instruments and platforms across many types of labs. If the technology can transfer between different labs in an organization, the work itself-sometimes under a single investigator-enjoys a smoother pathway. As Daniel puts it, "The availability and use of the same platform and the same technology at different points facilitates better and faster results overall."

Come to our talk at AACR!
At the annual American Association for Cancer Research meeting in San Diego, Illumina is sponsoring a spotlight talk on Sunday, April 7 from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. The session features speakers working across the continuum from discovery through clinical research: Working on discovery, Dr. Hussein Abbas from MD Anderson Cancer Center will discuss how the Illumina NovaSeq X Series is unlocking massive microenvironment and cell heterogeneity discovery power via single-cell sequencing. In the emerging translational application area, Dr. Aadel Chaudhuri from Mayo Clinic will show data using our RNA Prep with Enrichment kit to sequence cfRNA from blood and urine samples, plus ctDNA and ctDNA methylation data. And finally, from the clinical research arena, Lily Chen, representing the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, will show results from the multiomic MATCH trial (RNA tissue data combined with ctDNA from blood samples), plus data on new TSO products.