This webinar discusses how next-generation sequencing and digital PCR can be used in a complementary manner for liquid biopsies in order to improve patient care.

Depending on the number of biomarkers being interrogated in circulating tumor DNA, either broad profiling by NGS or focused quantitative measurements by digital PCR may be best suited for clinical decision-making. The high sensitivity, specificity, and reproducibility of droplet digital PCR technology, as well as its rapid turnaround time and affordability, have led to its rapid adoption in clinical investigations, especially for cancer. Increasingly, translational researchers and clinicians are moving back and forth between the two technology approaches at different stages of disease.

Our panelists discuss the details of ctDNA cancer studies that they have conducted and will share how and why they chose the technical approaches that they used. Their talks address how their choice of technology platform was influenced by the type of cancer, its stage, the urgency of the information, what was already known and what could be usefully learned about the particular patient’s disease.

Lao Saal, head of translational oncogenomics at Sweden's Lund University, discusses how tumor heterogeneity can impact ctDNA cancer monitoring.

Isaac Garcia-Murillas, senior scientific officer at London's Institute of Cancer Research, shares details of a study that used ctDNA to predict clinical outcomes in breast cancer.