At the recently-concluded 2018 AMP Meeting, researchers at the New York Presbyterian Hospital (NYPH) and Weill Cornell Medical Center (WCMC) presented a poster¹ on the validation of an Oncomine™ cell-free DNA Lung Assay using ctDNA NGS standards developed by SeraCare (Seraseq^® ctDNA v2 Reference Materials),²

Neurotrophic tyrosine receptor kinases (NTRK) can become abnormally fused to other genes resulting in growth signals that can lead to cancer in many organs of the human body. TRK gene fusion-based cancers are rare but present in pediatric and adult cancers such as lung, thyroid, colon, etc. (see, e.g., Figure 1).

“So as everyone here is aware, I’m sure, detection of circulating tumor DNA is challenging. There’s very little of it, to start with.” Hardly a revolutionary statement by Tony Godfrey, PhD, (Associate Chair, Surgical Research and Associate Professor of Surgery, Boston University School of Medicine) but an important acknowledgement from a leading expert of the difficulty faced by laboratorians