The Liquid Biopsy Consortium: Challenges and opportunities for early cancer detection and monitoring.

The emerging field of liquid biopsy stands at the forefront of novel diagnostic strategies for cancer and other diseases. Liquid biopsy allows minimally invasive molecular characterization of cancers for diagnosis, patient stratification to therapy, and longitudinal monitoring. Liquid biopsy strategies include detection and monitoring of circulating tumor cells, cell-free DNA, and extracellular vesicles. In this review, we address the current understanding and the role of existing liquid-biopsy-based modalities in cancer diagnostics and monitoring. We specifically focus on the technical and clinical challenges associated with liquid biopsy and biomarker development being addressed by the Liquid Biopsy Consortium, established through the National Cancer Institute. The Liquid Biopsy Consortium has developed new methods/assays and validated existing methods/technologies to capture and characterize tumor-derived circulating cargo, as well as addressed existing challenges and provided recommendations for advancing biomarker assays.

Algae-based metallic nanoparticles: Synthesis, characterization and applications.

Nanomaterials (NMs) tailored via conventional physicochemical routes play havoc with the environment that has led to the evolution of competent green routes for the actualization of a circular economy on an industrial-scale. Algae belonging to the class Cyanophyceae, Chlorophyceae, Phaeophyceae and Rhodophyceae have been harnessed as nano-machineries through intracellular and extracellular synthesis of gold (Au), silver (Ag) and several other metallic nanoparticles. Algae are an appealing platform for the production of diverse NMs, primarily due to the presence of bioactive compounds such as pigments and antioxidants in their cell extracts that act as biocompatible reductants. Chlorella spp. and Sargassum spp. have been extensively explored for the synthesis of nanoparticles having antimicrobial properties, which can potentially substitute conventional antibiotics. Characterization of nanoparticles (NPs) synthesised from algae has been done using advanced spectroscopic, diffractographic and microscopic techniques such as UV-Vis FT-IR, DLS, XPS, XRD, SEM, TEM, AFM, HR-TEM, and EDAX. The present paper reviews the information available on algae-mediated biosynthesis of various NPs, their characterization and applications in different domains.