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Liquid biopsy

Published on February 26, 2026   29 min

A selection of talks on Methods

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0:00
I am Fabio Del Ben. I'm a clinical pathologist in Italy, at the CRO Aviano IRCCS National Cancer Institute. I will talk to you about liquid biopsy, especially in oncological settings.
0:18
So, what is liquid biopsy? For liquid biopsy, it's meant a non-invasive diagnostic technique analyzing tumor material in blood. Please note that the targets of liquid biopsy are not the traditional serum biomarkers like CA125, CEA or CA19-9. These are serum biomarkers which have been used for several years. But liquid biopsy is another kind of technology and analysis.
0:54
The targets of liquid biopsies can be different starting from circulating tumor DNA to circulating tumor cells, exosomes, which are fragments, extracellular vesicles detaching from cells, or even cell-free RNA. The best knowledge and the most widely available tools are about circulating tumor DNA, which is considered the most advanced application in liquid biopsy immediately followed by circulating tumor cells.
1:28
But why is liquid biopsy useful? Which benefits add to the usual core needle biopsy which is performed in cancer settings?
1:40
First of all, liquid biopsy has minimal invasiveness because it can be obtained by a simple venous blood draw like glucose testing, for example. We are talking about a simple blood draw from the arm, while core needle biopsy is a very strongly invasive procedure, punching the core of the tumor with a thick needle and it cannot be done in particular locations such as the brain or a highly vascularized organ that is much more difficult to obtain a core needle biopsy. For the same reason, the repeatability of liquid biopsy is high while the repeatability of core needle biopsy is limited.

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