Low-cost, Rapid and Accurate Molecular Diagnostics for Pediatric High Grade Glioma

Award: $130,000 over 1 year (2022-2023)
Principal Investigators: Dr. Carl Koschmann/Dr. Jack Wadden, University of Michigan Medical Center
Funding Partners: Catching Up With Jack

This project will optimize a number of wet-lab and computational aspects of an electronic sequencing pipeline which was recently established. By using low-cost DNA sequencers and pHGG focused assays, we will offer patients a more rapid molecular diagnosis (<1 day) to allow prompt enrollment in the most relevant clinical trials and enable practical CSF-based treatment response monitoring over the course of treatment. The project will also reduce the need for lumbar puncture for serial tracking of tumor response in clinic using blood (plasma) samples. Based on the lab’s recently completed prior work showing that tumor DNA shed into spinal fluid can be used for diagnosis and prediction of long-term treatment response. The team will leverage a highly-sensitive amplification technique—LAMP [2]—currently being used in rapid COVID-19 diagnostics (LAMP) along with a novel bioinformatic error correction technique to enable rapid, low-cost, accurate detection of tumor response directly from patient plasma.