ARTICLE SUMMARY:
Investors in diagnostics have focused their attention on liquid biopsy technologies for early detection of cancer and screening applications, but companies are seizing minimal residual disease (MRD) testing as a near-term opportunity. Strategies for implementation are a work in progress for all stakeholders—payors, patients, providers, and regulators.
While screening and early detection applications for cancer have dominated the attention of entrepreneurs and investors involved in blood-based diagnostic testing, widespread commercial prospects for those applications are far in the future.
More recently, momentum is building among diagnostics manufacturers to develop minimal residual disease (MRD) biomarkers for cancer. Advances in our biological understanding of cancer progression, the availability of ultrasensitive detection technologies, and the pressures to solve long-standing, huge unmet clinical gaps are driving this field forward.
A series of talks presented at the Cambridge Healthtech’s (CHI) Next Generation Dx Summit in Washington, DC, in August, and an interview with Gary Gustavsen, a partner at Health Advances and leader of its precision medicine practice, bring to light the current clinical status of the field and its near-term commercial potential.
