Liquid biopsy for precision diagnostics and therapeutics

Defining liquid biopsy parameters in postmenopausal women for disease diagnosis

“…The real advantage in collecting biopsies for diagnosis over other noninvasive approaches such as imaging is that biopsies allow for sophisticated genetic and biomarker analyses that can be used to tailor treatments that yield more successful outcomes. Liquid samples are used to qualitatively and quantitatively examine circulating tumor cells, various types of circulating nucleic acids that include cell-free DNA, cell-free RNAs (eg, messenger RNAs, transfer RNAs, long noncoding RNAs, and microRNAs), extracellular vesicles, proteins, metabolites, tumor-exposed platelets, and lipids 7 . Another level of complexity that may offer more applicability of nucleic acids in lipid biopsies is considering epigenetic changes in circulating DNA (cirDNA) samples 3,4 …”