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™ QuantiGene™ 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.

中文翻译：

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用于肿瘤样本中生物标志物检测的基于微珠的 RNA 多重面板

患者分层、预后和疾病监测是个性化癌症医学的三个重要方面。由于传统的血清肿瘤蛋白生物标志物缺乏特异性和敏感性，并且肿瘤异质性影响基于组织生物标志物的靶向治疗的反应，焦点已转移到使用分子肿瘤特征作为特异性生物标志物。基于多重微球的面板是稳健且具有成本效益的高通量分子检测，即使是少量劣质核酸，也可以准确表征肿瘤。只有少数研究报告了使用微球（珠子）同时量化目标靶标的 RNA 表达（多路复用）。这篇综述概述了基于珠子的 RNA 面板在分子肿瘤学中的各种应用，重点介绍 Invitrogen™ QuantiGene™ Plex Assay (Thermo Fisher Scientific)，并提供与基于 PCR 的方法和其他方法的比较。多重微珠检测的优势体现在量化福尔马林固定石蜡包埋 (FFPE) 档案组织中的 RNA 表达以及同时检测低输入样本中的生物标志物，包括量化显微解剖组织材料中的标志物，以表征异质性肿瘤样本中的位点，并通过检测少量循环肿瘤细胞中的标记物。