Utilization of the oncoscan microarray assay in cancer diagnostics

Current strategies for cancer patient management include the use of genomic and proteomic test results to help guide therapeutic selection. The need for multi-target variant analysis is highlighted by the growing number of novel therapies to treat tumors with specific profiles and the increasing recognition that cancer is an extremely heterogeneous syndrome. Microarray analysis is a powerful genomic tool that provides genome-wide genetic information that is critical for guiding cancer treatments. Unlike constitutional applications of microarray analysis which are performed on whole blood samples, microarray analysis of solid tumors is challenging because tumor tissues are typically formalin fixed and paraffin embedded (FFPE). Genomic DNA extracted from FFPE tissues can also be fragmented into small pieces and yield much lower concentrations of DNA. We validated and implemented the Affymetrix OncoScan® FFPE assay to enable genome-wide analysis from these types of samples. The Affymetrix OncoScan® assay utilizes molecular inversion probes that generate multiplexed array hybridization targets from as short as 40 base-pairs of sequence and as low as approximately 80 ng of genomic DNA. OncoScan microarray analysis provides genomic information that includes structural variations, copy number variations and SNPs in a timely and a cost-effective manner from FFPE tumor tissues.