An Overview of Comprehensive Genomic Profiling Technologies to Inform Cancer Care

An essential tool in precision medicine is companion diagnostics, which are medical devices used to assess critical information about the safety and effectiveness of corresponding drugs or biologic products. However, most conventional companion diagnostics are limited by their inability to test multiple genes or assess a broad range of genomic changes that can inform disease identification and care decisions. However, evolving comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) technologies can use samples from liquid biopsy or cancer tissues to examine a large panel of genes to detect global genomic changes to inform diagnosis, prevention, treatment, monitoring, and prognosis. CGP analyzes cell-free or circulating tumour DNA; the liquid biopsy–based CGP may provide additional information, such as tumour heterogeneity, that may not be detectable with tissue-based assays.

This CADTH Horizon Scan Bulletin presents an overview of liquid biopsy-based CGP technologies to inform cancer treatments. It includes a summary of information from published systematic reviews and non-randomized studies and provides perspectives and important considerations that may be informative to health care decision-makers and stakeholders in Canada.