Valid biomarker signatures from liquid biopsies - how to standardize next generation sequencing

Valid biomarker signatures from liquid biopsies - how to standardize NGS

Dominik Buschmann^1,2, Benedikt Kirchner^1,3, Michael W. Pfaffl¹

¹ Department of Animal Physiology and Immunology, TUM School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan, Freising, Germany

² Institute of Human Genetics, University Hospital, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Munich, Germany

³ Dr. von Hauner Children's Hospital, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Munich, Germany

Drug Target Review 2016 (issue 4): 40-44 

The advent of Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) techniques has revolutionized transcriptomics research and opened numerous avenues for scientific and clinical applications. While reverse transcriptase quantitative real-time PCR (RT-qPCR) is still considered the gold standard of gene expression analysis, its high throughput, single-nucleotide resolution and ever-plummeting costs have made NGS an intriguing and increasingly accessible alternative to this classical method. In addition to mere transcript quantification, RNA-Seq offers exciting new insights such as the discovery of novel transcripts and detection of alternative splice variants or chimeric transcripts. While DNA sequencing yields fascinating discoveries about the genomic makeup of target tissues, RNA-Seq might hold even more potential for biomarker research and drug discovery. 

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