New Developments in DNA Array Diagnostics

Bertrand Jordan, Principal, Marseille-Nice Genopole

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Launch presentation

About the speaker

Bertrand R Jordan (CNRS research director, ret.), an academic molecular biologist with particular achievements in the field of molecular immunology, is the founder and coordinator of the Marseille-Nice Genopole genomics consortium. An early contributor to DNA array development since 1995, he is also a consultant for French (Ipsogen), Dutch (PamGene) and Taiwanese (Phalanx, Dr. Chip) microarray companies, that operate in fields ranging from prognostic and predictive expression profiling in breast cancer, to “companion diagnostics” based on multiplex kinase activity measurement, and to efficient bacterial diagnostics in the food industry.

Abstract

After a slow start, clinical applications of DNA arrays have achieved some presence in a number of medical settings. Several tests have been introduced and in some cases have obtained regulatory approval; however, most of the marketed diagnostic systems using DNA arrays are aimed at bacterial identification, mutation detection or global assessment of genome alterations, a particularly successful case being arrayCGH, often coupled with CNV detection. Gene expression applications have not achieved the expected prominence, because of the need to demonstrate the clinical significance of the expression signatures. In contrast, “genotyping arrays” look at features (mutations, bacterial or viral subtypes) whose clinical significance is already known. This is a very important difference in terms of acceptance by clinicians as well as regulatory approval.

In addition, and in spite of very wide acceptance in the research community, clinical arrays present issues in terms of robustness, ease of operation and cost, and the information they provide must not only be scientifically and statistically valid, but must also support a clinical decision to treat or not to treat, or to treat differentially. The recent development and wide acceptance of high-speed, affordable genome sequencing provides very strong competition to many research DNA array applications, and is beginning to have an impact in the diagnostic field as well. Altogether, even though DNA arrays will certainly find their place in the diagnostic world, this will be limited to certain types of applications and not as wide-ranging as predicted a few years ago.

Launch presentation