Empowered Patient Podcast HDPCR Technology Bridges Gap Between PCR and Gene Sequencing to Diagnose Cancer with Mark McDonough ChromaCode
Mark McDonough, the CEO of ChromaCode, is leveraging high-definition PCR testing to overcome the limitations of conventional PCR to identify biomarkers of infectious diseases and cancer. While gene sequencing can provide valuable information, it requires more tissue, is expensive, and requires at least a week for analysis. Using HDPCR, ChromaCode has developed a lung cancer assay that looks at nine genes and 15 biomarkers, requiring less tissue, performed at a lower cost, and provides results quickly. This approach, built on a cloud-supported multiplexing platform, provides flexibility to explore other areas in oncology and transplants, looking at multiple targets per sample.
Mark explains, "With PCR today, assays look at particular biomarkers on a gene-by-gene basis. So those can be effective in lung cancer, for example, if you know you're just looking for EGFR as a biomarker or if you're looking at KRAS or ALK, a different mutation. But the problem is it's not very comprehensive, and you need a lot of tissue. So, PCR falls short because it's limited in scalability and requires a lot of tissue."
"Why this is important for the patient in terms of patient empowerment and lung cancer is when a patient gets their result back from ChromaCode and their provider using ChromaCode technology, they also are more than likely having an immunochemistry test called PD-L1 run. They're trying to determine if there is a targeted therapy, or is it best to put a patient on immunotherapy, or is there a combination of immunotherapy and chemo?"
"Having all that answer back in one to two days, as opposed to knowing what you'll get back from immunochemistry in a day and then waiting two weeks for sequencing, can be very problematic. So, we feel like we're meeting that open opportunity where sequencing is too slow and too expensive, requiring too much tissue, and PCR just isn't comprehensive enough and is very much trial and error on a one-by-one basis with our technology."
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