Advances in Circulating Tumor DNA Research

Omicia, a provider of clinical genomic data analysis and reporting tools, has been selected to join the Cancer Moonshot’s Blood Profiling Atlas in Cancer (Blood PAC) consortium. In joining Blood PAC, Omicia is demonstrating its commitment to advancing cancer genetics research and extending patients’ lives.

The Blood PAC was formed in October 2016 in alignment with Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative. The scientists in Blood PAC will quickly advance the study of liquid biopsy samples, and develop safe and effective patient blood profiling diagnostic technologies. Blood PAC’s consortium is comprised of about 30 organizations, tasked with creating standardized protocols.

Omicia is supporting the Cancer Moonshot’s Blood PAC by providing leading clinical informatics tools for the analysis of circulating tumor DNA from liquid biopsy samples. Omicia has extensive expertise in clinical annotation of large-scale genomic data, and currently provides high-throughput clinical genomic reports for Genomics England’s 100,000 Genomes Project and LabCorp. Omicia’s cutting-edge genomic interpretation algorithms have been licensed by over 1,000 clinical laboratories and universities.

Martin Reese, Ph.D., Omicia’s chief scientific officer, co-founder and president stated, “We are excited to support the Cancer Moonshot Blood PAC initiative by leveraging our deep expertise in genomics. The many recent advancements in the study of circulating tumor DNA are enabling more and more discoveries in the area of cancer genomics, and Omicia’s informatics tools are accelerating the availability and application of that knowledge. This gives clinicians the actionable data with which they can improve patient outcomes.”

Omicia’s Opal^TM Clinical platform allows scientists and clinicians to collaborate and share genomic data. Blood PAC will use Omicia’s Opal Clinical NGS interpretation platform, which includes public and proprietary clinical curation of both somatic and germline variants in cancer. In addition, Omicia will share bioinformatics expertise in variant interpretation to develop guidelines for data quality in somatic variant interpretation.