Bead-based RNA multiplex panels for biomarker detection in oncology samples

Patient stratification, prognosis and disease monitoring are three important aspects of personalized cancer medicine. With traditional serum tumour protein biomarkers showing lack of specificity and sensitivity, and tumour heterogeneity affecting the response to targeted therapy based on tissue biomarkers, the focus has shifted to the use of molecular tumour signatures as specific biomarkers. Multiplex microsphere-based panels are robust and cost-effective, high throughput molecular assays, which can accurately characterize tumours even from small amounts of poor quality nucleic acids. Only few studies have reported the use of microspheres (beads) to quantify RNA expression of targets of interest simultaneously (multiplexing). This review is an overview of the various applications of bead-based RNA panels in molecular oncology, with focus on the Invitrogen (TM) QuantiGene (TM) Plex Assay (Thermo Fisher Scientific), and provides a comparison with PCR-based and other methodologies. The advantages of multiplex bead assays are exemplified by the quantification of RNA expression in formalin-fixed, paraffin embedded (FFPE) archival tissue and the simultaneous detection of biomarkers in low input samples, including quantification of markers in microdissected tissue material, to characterise heterogeneous tumour sites within a sample, and by the detection of markers in low numbers of circulating tumour cells.