Gottfried Konecny, MD & Victor Velculescu, MD, PhD
About Project
NON-INVASIVE LIQUID BIOPSY APPROACH FOR EARLY DETECTION OF OVARIAN CANCER USING CELL-FREE DNA FRAGMENTATION PATTERNS
PROJECT SUMMARY
Despite advances in therapy, ovarian cancer (OC) survival outcomes remain poor. Less than 30% of women with advanced stage disease survive long-term. However, when diagnosed at stage I, up to 90% of patients can be cured with conventional surgery and chemotherapy. At present, only 15 % of OCs are detected at stage I due, in part, to the absence of specific symptoms and due to lack of an effective screening strategy yet molecular analyses of OCs indicate that DNA is shed into the blood early on in disease procession and may be a useful biomarker. Recent advances in liquid biopsy research have focused on identifying circulating, cell-free DNA (cfDNA) derived from tumor tissues as a biomarker of cancer. We developed a liquid biopsy approach called ‘DNA evaluation of fragments for early interception’ (DELFI) based on genome-wide evaluation of cfDNA fragments for early cancer detection. We aim to determine whether genome-wide fragmentation profiles of cfDNA are different between patients with OC and patients with benign ovarian tumors or healthy individuals. The results of this study will help develop a blood-based test for OC early detection which may lower the morbidity and mortality of OC.
