Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Develops Liquid Biopsy Test for Pediatric Solid Tumors

Pediatric solid tumors make up approximately 40% of all childhood cancers. While pediatric cancer is rare, children can develop a wide range of tumor types, located in different parts of the body, which can make the differential diagnosis challenging. Investigators at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) have developed a liquid biopsy for solid tumors that has the potential to aid in reaching a specific diagnosis when surgery or a tissue biopsy is not feasible. The open-access study findings were published on February 20, 2023 in the journal npj Precision Oncology. “This is one of the first clinically validated liquid biopsy tests to be launched at a pediatric academic medical center,” says Jaclyn Biegel (photo at left) PhD, Chief of Genomic Medicine and Director of the Center for Personalized Medicine at CHLA. “We created a test that may be helpful in making a diagnosis, determining prognosis, and potentially identifying an effective therapy for children with solid tumors,” says Fariba Navid (photo below), MD, Medical Director of Clinical Research in the Cancer and Blood Disease Institute at CHLA. Dr. Navid and Dr. Biegel are co-senior authors of this study. The open-access article is titled “Combined Low-Pass Whole Genome and Targeted Sequencing in Liquid Biopsies for Pediatric Solid Tumors.”