Collaborative Liquid Biopsy and Reference Materials Efforts (International Liquid Biopsy Alliance, ILBA)

IMI’s CANCER-ID is entering into collaboration with several other non-profit efforts, as well as facilitating dialogue with the FDA and EMA, to coordinate standardization in the liquid biopsy space and periodically update each other on tools and resources being produced from our individual teams. After CANCER-ID comes to an end in December 2019, the European Liquid Biopsy Society (ELBS) will represent many of the former CANCER-ID partners in the ILBA. We hope that this communication will allow all efforts in the space to move forward more quickly and avoid duplication. For more information please see the links below:

FNIH: The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) accelerates game-changing biomedical research by forging powerful collaborations among the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as well as world-leading public and private institutions. It identifies and validates ctDNA Quality Control Materials within the Biomarkers Consortium (https://fnih.org/what-we-do/biomarkers-consortium/programs/ctdna-reference-materials).

BloodPAC: developed a Genomic Data Commons to aggregate liquid biopsy work, now open for contribution, and developed minimum technical data elements (MTDEs) for pre-analytical variables and patient context (https://www.bloodpac.org/).   

Friends of Cancer Research: has developed a framework for standardizing clinical ctDNA testing and is soliciting retrospective and prospective studies to validate the hypothesis that ctDNA is reflective of outcomes. In addition, FOCR is building a framework for best practices to measure and report TMB (https://www.focr.org/).

Medical Device Innovation Consortium: is developing somatic reference samples in solid tissues (https://mdic.org/).

NIBSC: is the WHO International Laboratory for Biological Standards and is producing the WHO 1st International Standards for circulating tumor DNA, intended for the calibration of kits, assays and secondary standards (https://www.nibsc.org/).

ELBS: In European Liquid Biopsy Society (ELBS) academic researchers and companies from Europe will work together for the goal:  Foster the introduction of liquid biopsy into clinical trials and practice. ELBS will encourage the interaction between academia and industry, support the implementation of liquid biopsy tests into clinical trials, and provide training in liquid biopsy for medical scientist. For more information, please contact Klaus Pantel tumorbiologie(at)uke.de.

In addition to the partners named above, the group of collaborators is open to other groups who may have similarly aligned interests and would welcome them into ILBA discussions (for more information please contact Dana Connors, dconnors(at)fnih.org).