Interpace Diagnostics, a subsidiary of Interpace Biosciences announced that new data demonstrating the application of advanced sequencing technologies in pancreatic cancer was published as an e-abstract as part of the 2024 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting. Abstract e16359 highlights the evolving landscape of sequencing technologies for analyzing short tandem repeats (STRs) in pancreatic cancer detection. STRs, alternatively known as microsatellites, function as regulators of gene expression.

STRs are prone to mutation with alterations correlated to pathogenicity--with allelic imbalance and microsatellite instability observed in diseases such as Huntington's disease, hereditary ataxia, and multiple cancers. While traditional methods such as capillary electrophoresis (CE) and Sanger sequencing have been the cornerstone for STR analysis, newer tools like second-generation short-read sequencing (NGS) and third-generation long-read sequencing (TGS) offer the potential for high-throughput scaling.