Approved liquid biopsy tests can identify mutations for which drugs exist, offering a less invasive alternative to tissue biopsy.

“you know we do have a number of approved liquid biopsy tests and they're certainly going to have a role anytime we've already conceded that there are some mutations that are very important in certain tumors and we have drugs for those mutations if you can find out that mutational information without having to stick a needle in someone everyone is going to be grateful for that”

“what we've we you know the field garden we others have shown is that you don't in many patients with advanced disease because like say one percent of the circling tumor dna is from the cancer if that's enough that you can identify the mutations without needing to do the biopsy so that's potentially very useful particularly in patients who can't have a biopsy or where they had a biopsy but the whole all the tissue was used up there's lots of cases like this um and um or where the biopsy missed the tumor that happens a lot as you as you know or a certain subset of the time so uh in those cases it can be super useful to have a blood test to say oh yeah this patient does have an egfr mutation so they should get on the egfr tyrosine kinase inhibitor”