ArcherDX dives into liquid biopsy research with Reveal ctDNA™ 28 assay

BOULDER, Colo., Sept. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ArcherDX, the leader in NGS-based gene fusions, has announced the addition of a liquid biopsy assay to their portfolio. Archer® Reveal ctDNA™ 28 is the first in a line of Archer assays developed for liquid biopsy research applications.

"Digital PCR is great if you know what you're looking for," stated Dr. Jason Myers, CEO of ArcherDX. "But for initial identification of a mutation profile, or for detecting evolving resistance mutations, NGS casts a much broader net. The entire market is looking at liquid biopsies in order to accelerate the identification of driver mutations."

Designed for lung and other solid tumor types, the Archer Reveal ctDNA assay includes full-exon coverage of the tumor suppressor TP53 as a general marker of malignancy. The panel also covers key activating and drug-resistance mutations in 27 different oncogenes associated with multiple solid tumor types.

The Archer Reveal ctDNA assay was designed for high-throughput laboratories and utilizes the same lyophilized reagents and automated bioinformatics analysis as other Archer assays. The assay generates NGS libraries using as little as 1ng of circulating, cell-free tumor DNA (ctDNA) and requires only 5 million paired-end reads.

"The workflow of the Archer Reveal ctDNA assay is very fast and very easy to run. Beta users have stated that with an 8-channel multipipettor, an individual investigator can easily generate over 24 different libraries in less than 7 hours, with total time from sample to sequencer in a single day," stated Dr. Brian Kudlow, Vice President of R&D at ArcherDX.

"But the assay is about more than just a good workflow," Dr. Kudlow explained. "This assay is an ideal application of Anchored Multiplex PCR (AMP™) enrichment chemistry, designed specifically to capture fragmented nucleic acid for NGS-based library prep."

Dr. Kudlow elaborated, "Ligating ctDNA fragments with sequencing adapters that contain molecular barcodes (or unique molecular identifiers) permits bioinformatic error correction, which is vitally important to reducing false-positive observations at allelic frequencies of less than 1%. Additionally, preferential amplification of shorter fragments gives us remarkable sensitivity for somatic mutations, even in the presence of contaminating white blood cells. Post-sequencing, sophisticated algorithms in the included Archer Analysis software package make it easy to sort, filter and print out a report of meaningful results."

Archer will be presenting initial data on the assay next week at the European Society of Pathology/International Association of Pathology (ESP/IAP) meeting in Cologne, Germany, and will be making demonstration data available on their Analysis website: archerdx.com/analysis.

For research use only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.

About ArcherDX 

ArcherDX addresses the bottlenecks associated with using NGS in translational research by offering a robust platform for targeted sequencing applications.

By combining proprietary Anchored Multiplexed PCR (AMP™) chemistry and easy-to-use, lyophilized reagents, Archer NGS assays generate highly enriched sequencing libraries to detect gene fusions, point mutations, CNVs and RNA abundance. Complemented by the Archer suite of bioinformatics software, ArcherDX technology dramatically enhances complex mutation identification and discovery.  

ArcherDX is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, USA.

http://archerdx.com

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