Nature.com Webcasts

8AM PST | 11AM EST | 4PM GMT | 5PM CET

Watch On Demand

Compared to tissue-based biomarkers, blood-based biomarkers have many advantages including lower risks to patients, lower cost, and easier collection along the continuum of care, including at the start of treatment, in the setting of response, and at the time of progression. Many proteins of interest in cancer biology can be detected in plasma. These include inflammatory, immune, and tumor-related growth factors that have been described to mediate resistance to various targeted therapeutics. However, many cytokines and growth factors circulate at very low levels and are often difficult to detect using standard ELISA technologies. Utilizing ultrasensitive technologies, we now have the ability to systematically evaluate low abundance cytokines and growth factors.

Join Dr. Andrew Nixon, Associate Professor in Medicine at Duke University Medical Center as he discusses multiplexing of these ultrasensitive assays and how they allow for the assessment of multiple proteins at lower cost and from less plasma volume than traditional ELISA formats.

Because ELISA techniques are also readily adapted into clinical diagnostics, any potential findings in plasma are highly actionable, both diagnostically and therapeutically.