Liquid Biopsy for the Tumor Microenvironment: with Vince Miller and Mirna Jarosz
About this episode
The episode discusses how liquid biopsy can measure the tumor microenvironment and its implications for cancer therapy.
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.mendelspod.com We’ve become remarkably good at reading cancer cells. Spatial biology enabled us to read them in context. Today we discuss a new Nature study suggesting that the tumor microenvironment—the immune cells, stromal cells, and surrounding biology that often determines whether a therapy succeeds or fails—can be measured from a simple blood draw, or liquid biopsy. To do that we’re joined by Dr. Vincent Miller, an oncologist and former founding Chief Medical Officer of Foundation Medicine, and Dr. Mirna Jarosz, CEO of LiquidCell Dx. The work introduces a striking idea. Rather than focusing only on mutations inside tumor cells, it identifies recurring spatial ecosystems within tumors and then shows that their signatures can be recovered from plasma cell-free DNA using methylation patterns. The implication is that liquid biopsy may soon reveal not only what mutations a tumor carries, but how its surrounding biology is organized before treatment ever begins. But wait. How can blood possibly contain information about spatial organization inside a tumor? That answer unfolds gradually on today’s show, making the…
People in this episode
Host: Theral Timpson
Guests: Dr. Vincent Miller, Dr. Mirna Jarosz
Topics covered
- liquid biopsy
- tumor microenvironment
- spatial biology
- cancer therapy
- plasma cell-free DNA
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Foundation Medicine, LiquidCell Dx
Books & works: Nature
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