The isolation and identification of circulating tumour cells and circulating tumour DNA in glioblastoma patients

Abstract

Liquid biopsies are emerging as an important scientific development in cancer medicine to provide prognostic information and to help guide patient treatment and management. 'Liquid biopsies' is a more comprehensive term that refers to any liquid samples from patients (blood, cerebrospinal fluid, and urine predominantly), due to the vast quantity of biologic information that can be gleaned from them. They are an attractive source for biopsies because they can be easily repeated for individual patients to track disease progress, are reproducible, and can provide biological information or even diagnostic information on occasion. Liquid biopsies also take advantage of the current revolution in genomic medicine technologies that make once highly technical and difficult tests cheaper, more routine, and more commonplace. Nevertheless, much work needs to be done before liquid biopsy methodologies can be considered standard of care in the clinic. This thesis focusses on the application of liquid biopsies to patients with brain cancer, and in particular, the discovery and development of novel methodologies that have not previously been described. Our overarching hypothesis was that liquid biopsies would yield novel insights that could be translated as biomarkers for patients with glioblastoma multiforme in the future.

Date of Award	2019
Original language	English