Dr. Ocean Discusses the Use of ctDNA in Pancreatic Cancer

Allyson Ocean, MD, an associate attending physician, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, and associate professor of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, discusses the use of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in pancreatic cancer.

ctDNA analysis has been done, but it is still in its infancy in terms of guiding therapy. As such, it is not being done routinely in pancreatic cancer, says Ocean. Several challenges need to be addressed before ctDNA analysis is made widely available. For example, sometimes more than the tumor DNA is sampled, which can result in confounding factors.

Ongoing trials and experimental protocols are investigating the use of ctDNA to predict disease recurrence, as well as develop better therapies, concludes Ocean.