BioFluidica's Liquid Biopsy Technology for Breast Cancer Outperforms Traditional Needle Biopsy

It was bound to happen. Liquid biopsies, the increasingly ubiquitous, non-invasive blood tests that can detect cancer in the blood, often at very early stages, are showing positive results in breast cancer. 

 

Among the most impressive data comes from BioFluidica, a San Diego-based biotech company whose LiquidScan, a next-generation liquid biopsy platform to detect HER2–positive genetic profiles in patients with breast cancer, performed better in a small but significant trial than traditional needle biopsies, according to study results from BioFluidica.

Larger clinical trials are on the way, says BioFluidica CEO Rolf Muller (left). But it now seems virtually inevitable that in the not-too-distant future, cancer clinics nationwide and  worldwide will be deploying liquid biopsies to discover and diagnose breast cancer. 

One of several companies studying liquid biopsy for breast cancer, Biofluidica provides advanced biomarker capture with what they call "unprecedented precision" that is clinically validated in six different cancer types as well as stroke. Muller believes the company’s technology will revolutionize disease and bring improved, non-invasive diagnostics to many people.

Biofluidica's diagnostic platform can precisely capture and isolate disease biomarkers in the blood such as circulating tumor cells (CTC's), and has been clinically validated.

HER2 is the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2, a gene that makes a protein found on the surface of all breast cells.

 

People with HER2–positive breast cancer showed favorable success when using personalized HER2-directed therapy, according to trial results from BioFluidica.

The study demonstrated that current biopsies are missing more than a quarter of patients who may be eligible for HER2-directed therapy. The results suggest that the use of non-invasive liquid biopsy methods can rapidly and accurately identify if patient samples have HER2 status.

 

"We at Biofluidica are very excited after a lot of work to commercialize rare cell and exosome applications important to oncology and fetal medicine,” Muller said in a press statement. "Specifically our recent study on HER2 breast cancer, which opens the door to more detailed tools that may guide targeted therapeutic decisions. "

 

While there are successful tests based on analysis of cell-free DNA, many diseases are not amendable to a cfDNA test. This may be because of the size of the DNA marker, the relative concentration of the marker in the blood, or because of a need to explore more within the biology of the disease in question.

The study was performed by BioFluidica, Neogenomics Laboratories, and Kay Yeung, MD, PhD, from the University of California San Diego Moores Cancer Center and the University of California San Diego Biorepository & Tissue Technology Shared Resource. 

"Our hope with LiquidScan is to be able to facilitate and revolutionize disease research and management. Thanks to its flexibility, LiquidScan can be readily adapted for several applications,” said Muller in a press statement.

"The platform is ideal for those applications where the ability to conduct frequent tests and deliver results quickly where point-of-care testing is critical. I am especially excited that we might be able to find more patients that could be eligible for improved therapy using the high sensitivity LiquidScan Next-Generation Liquid Biopsy platform.”