Fluxion Biosciences, Inc. announced the launch of the Spotlight 59 Oncology Panel. Designed for the detection of mutations from liquid biopsy samples, the Spotlight 59 Oncology Panel is a turnkey solution, offering ultra-sensitive variant detection from low input quantities of DNA. The high sensitivity of Spotlight 59 makes it ideal for CTCs, cfDNA, and other challenging sample types such as FFPE. Used in conjunction with Fluxion’s IsoFlux Liquid Biopsy System, Spotlight 59 creates a complete sample-to-answer assay for high sensitivity mutation detection of solid tumor cancers from blood samples.

Liquid biopsies are emerging as a powerful tool in cancer research, where the ability to detect and track cancer using non-invasive methods offers tremendous diagnostic potential. However, cancer DNA in blood samples is present at very low concentrations, to levels of 0.1% or below. Even with CTCs recovered from IsoFlux, which enrich cancer cell content to 5-25%, heterogeneity among the cancer cells can still produce samples with mutation levels below 1%. Fluxion overcomes this limitation with ERASE-Seq, its statistically driven bioinformatics solution. ERASE-Seq delivers unrivalled performance, with sensitivity to 0.1% allele frequency with no false positives detected across the Spotlight 59 panel.

The Spotlight 59 Oncology Panel offers comprehensive and hotspot coverage of 59 clinically-relevant oncology-related genes, using a 277-amplicon design to generate multiplex libraries compatible with Illumina sequencing platforms, without the need for complicated molecular barcodes. The panel, based on Swift Biosciences Accel-Amplicon chemistry, is a complete kit that includes all elements necessary for generating ready-to-sequence libraries, including primer pairs and indexed sequencing adapters.

According to Fluxion’s CEO, Jeff Jensen, the Spotlight 59 Oncology Panel with ERASE-Seq represents a major advance in cancer clinical research. “A main limitation to broad adoption of liquid biopsies is achieving detection sensitivity without introducing false positives. Spotlight 59 with ERASE-Seq overcomes this limitation with a simplified, cost-effective workflow that every sequencing lab can adopt.”

The Spotlight 59 panel (part number 910-0113) is available immediately and can be used with multiple sample types, including CTC samples from existing IsoFlux systems and kits.