Liquid biopsy could lead to precision therapies for children’s eye tumors

LOS ANGELES — Retinoblastoma was one of the first cancers to have its genetic origins identified in the late 1980s — a finding that helped launch the current era of personalized treatments that have transformed treatment of breast, lung, and prostate cancer.

But the children who develop these rare tumors in their retinas have never benefited from that wave of precision diagnostics and therapies. That’s largely because doctors haven’t been able to biopsy the tumors for genetic information that could guide treatment, without removing the very eyes clinicians are trying so hard to save.

Now, because a young oncologist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles followed a hunch, there may be a safe, non-invasive way to biopsy retinoblastoma tumors — using fluid that’s removed from the eye during chemotherapy and showed that DNA found in the fluid matched the DNA found in tumors — a discovery that could lead to a new liquid biopsy.