At first, it may seem unnecessary. But I’ll tell you this: having a to-do list has been one of the biggest game changers in keeping my days organized and productive.

When I first started, I wasn’t always sure what to write down. Sometimes I told myself, “I have it in my head, no need to write it down.” That was the trap. I’d walk into the day thinking I was in control, only to end up feeling unfulfilled, disappointed, and guilty for not completing the things I had planned in my head.

Time after time, I blamed myself for “not working hard enough,” when the real problem was that I hadn’t even mapped out my day. It wasn’t until I began jotting tasks in a small notebook that I finally saw the difference.

A to-do list isn’t just a checklist — it’s a productivity tool. It helps you:

• Improve focus by showing you what truly matters.
• Reduce stress by getting thoughts out of your head.
• Boost motivation with the small wins of ticking things off.
• Manage time better with a clear structure for the day.

Studies have shown that planning is one of the simplest yet most effective habits for living a fulfilled and accomplished life. A single day may look insignificant, but a lot can happen in 24 hours. And if you don’t plan it? You’ll likely waste it.

Every unplanned day is like walking into a farm without tools — unproductive, frustrating, and ultimately costly.

So here’s the bottom line: write it down.
Whether the task feels too small or too big, planning gives you direction. Over time, those small, intentional actions compound into lifetime achievements, goals, and even dreams.

4 Tips for Building a To-Do List That Actually Works

1. Start Small
   Your list doesn’t need to include “launch a startup” or “build a house.” Start with simple, achievable tasks. Something like “read two chapters of a book,” “wash clothes,” or “fix one line of code.” Small wins create momentum, and momentum prepares you for the big wins.
2. Keep Writing It Down (Even If You Don’t Follow It at First)
   When I first started, I wasn’t always committed. I often ignored my list. But looking back at what I left undone motivated me to do better the next day. Consistency is key — keep writing, even if you don’t check everything off right away.
3. Be Patient with Change
   Building habits takes time. You won’t instantly become a productivity machine. To-do lists require focus, discipline, and persistence. Give yourself space to grow into the habit. What feels awkward at first will soon become second nature.
4. Reevaluate and Adjust
   A to-do list isn’t set in stone. Look back at your progress, see what’s working, and make adjustments. Reevaluating helps you stay proactive, improve your approach, and refine how you plan.

Final Thoughts

Starting a to-do list might feel messy at first. You’ll forget things. You’ll skip things. But stick with it. Over time, the habit will transform not just your days but your life.

Because the truth is simple: when you plan your day, you take control of your future.

So — what are your best to-do list tips? Drop them in the comments. And if this resonated with you, don’t forget to like and share.

I was invited to a podcast some weeks ago and was given a topic to discuss: the dependency on AI. This really caught my attention because it is something that should be addressed in our present world.
Our world has evolved, endorsing and promoting the rapid growth and advancement of various technologies. In a span of 100–200 years, the world has gone from ancient to mechanical to technological and a machine-based way of living. What would take hours to work on, like drying your clothes, editing grammar in your write-ups, or searching for books, is now much easier and faster to do. The development of numerous highly intelligent technologies or machine-based systems is making our way of handling things much easier and faster. But over time, it seems like these systems are starting to replace us. I’ll be talking more about the aspect of AI.

According to IBM, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem-solving, decision-making, creativity, and autonomy.

It is meant to assist us in handling tedious tasks at a much faster rate, right?
But why does it look like it’s replacing us or doing what we should do? Could it be how we are using it?

In my sophomore year, there was this lecturer who was so fierce and was known to be one of the most feared lecturers in the whole faculty. He would always give the toughest questions to drill our minds. One question could take hours to solve, and sometimes you won’t even arrive at the correct answer. I vividly remember a time he gave us about twenty tough questions to solve, to be submitted the next week. Those questions were freaking tough. I had to consult textbooks, videos, and other resources and materials to understand and solve each question. I had spent hours solving one question, filling up four pages while still working on it. It was really crazy. At some point, I was tempted to use AI, but each time I consulted it, I was given different answers for a single question, making me confused and unsure of which answer to go for. I later found out that 80–90% of the students who did the assignment consulted AI, and close to 80% of their answers to the questions were wrong, not because they used AI or it isn’t good to use it, but because it is limited and prone to errors.

Well, of course, not everything works perfectly as expected. AI was created by humans. So it runs on certain limits and can’t always give us everything that we want.

Major Disadvantages of Over-Dependency on AI

In this article, I’m going to outline four major disadvantages of over-dependency on AI that could be threatening to our society.

1. Diminished Human Decision-Making Skills

I agree that AI can process data and provide recommendations faster than humans, but when people lean too heavily on it, our natural decision-making skills begin to erode. For generations, humans have thrived on problem-solving, debating, and weighing consequences, which has helped in tackling and providing solutions to pressing problems for ages. Why should we limit our thinking to what a machine says? If every decision is outsourced to algorithms, there is a high chance that people may lose the ability to think critically, which could in turn lead to serious consequences.

Imagine workplaces or companies where employers make use of AI to recruit employees through merely scanning CVs or résumés, without carrying out traditional interviews to deeply understand individual personalities and abilities to work — this could lead to a catastrophe in the field.

All I’m trying to point out here is that humans should always be included in every system of technology. AI can be good at raising suggestions and answering questions, but there should always be a human in the loop, taking charge of critical decisions in respective fields.

2. Vulnerability to AI Limitations and Errors

No AI system is perfect because it’s only as good as the data and algorithms that shape it. Bias in data, flaws in coding, or unexpected scenarios can all lead to errors. The danger comes when humans blindly trust AI outputs without oversight. Take, for instance, the example I gave earlier concerning the students who chose to rely on AI to answer complex questions, and it couldn’t get everything correct. Just as we, the creators of AI, aren’t perfect, neither is AI. Mistakes and errors are always bound to happen.

Imagine a doctor who analyzes a disease or illness using an AI application without properly looking into it, but rather depending on the system, he could miss some minor or deadly spots. The key takeaway is that AI should be supervised by humans who understand its limitations and can step in when errors occur.

3. Reduced Human Creativity and Innovation

This was one of the disadvantages I had to point out during the podcast because gradually, depending on these systems, could reduce human creativity, authenticity, and innovation. AI can generate text, music, designs, and even research insights at impressive speed. While this is beneficial, over-reliance risks stifling human creativity. If we let AI handle all artistic or innovative tasks, humans may become complacent and lose the drive to imagine beyond the machine’s output.

For instance, students who copy-paste AI-generated essays may graduate with weak writing and reasoning skills. Artists and writers using AI art or writing tools might skip the effort of developing unique styles. Businesses that rely solely on AI for product ideas risk producing generic, uninspired work that lacks a human touch. It all has its own disadvantages in certain areas.

Moreover, AI’s creativity is derivative — it recombines patterns from data it has seen before. True innovation, however, often comes from intuition, cultural context, or even accidents — things machines don’t experience. The airplane, the theory of relativity, or the invention of the internet all came from bold human leaps, not data-driven extrapolation.

Remember this: AI is created to assist us and raise recommendations or suggestions when necessary, and not to replace us.

4. Privacy, Security, and Ethical Concerns

The last and most concerning: Privacy, Security, and Ethical Concerns. If I say that AI runs or gives us answers or recommendations based on the data input into it, ever wondered where the data comes from? Who accesses the data? And whose data is being used? Well, it’s our data. This makes it quite concerning in terms of security and the handling of sensitive information.

AI thrives on data, and the more we depend on it, the more personal and sensitive information we hand over. This creates significant risks:

• Privacy: AI-driven apps (like recommendation systems or smart assistants) collect massive amounts of personal data. If misused or hacked, it exposes users to surveillance and exploitation.
• Security: Cybercriminals are increasingly weaponizing AI to create deepfakes, phishing emails, or automated hacking attempts. Heavy reliance on AI could make systems more vulnerable to sophisticated attacks.
• Ethics: AI decisions lack moral reasoning. For instance, an autonomous drone programmed to eliminate “targets” might do so without weighing ethical consequences. Similarly, an AI hiring system might filter applicants purely on numbers, ignoring the human stories behind them.

So we are mostly trading our data to get what we want from it. I say that as AI integrates deeper into society, we must enforce transparency, accountability, and strong ethical boundaries.

In Conclusion

After the assignment was submitted, it was revealed that not many students performed as well as expected, especially since the lecturer valued the work being done the way he had taught in class to ensure we truly understood his lessons. I was glad that I didn’t depend on AI, like some other students did, but instead chose to solve the problems and apply critical thinking myself. This effort later made the exam questions feel less difficult.

I am not condemning AI, but rather addressing certain harmful issues it could impose on society, and how over-reliance on it can lead to more severe consequences.

AI is powerful, but over-dependence weakens our judgment, creativity, and control, and takes more of our data. The more we let machines think for us, the less capable we become of thinking for ourselves.

Let AI assist, not replace. Trust it, but always question it. Because if we surrender too much, we risk losing the very human insight that makes technology meaningful.

The warning is clear: AI should empower us — not make us powerless.

What are your thoughts on AI dependency? I’d love to hear your perspectives in the comments. If you found this valuable, consider sharing it with your network and following for more insights👍.

Detailed investigation of the recent innovation in the early detection of cancer

While I was growing up, I would constantly hear reports of new diseases, their symptoms, and their effects spreading from one area to another like a bird migration in the sky.

That occurred so casually that nothing new would ever surprise me; after all, a fresh narrative would emerge every day.

Yet, of all I’ve seen and heard, none broke my heart or my mother’s like what my grandma went through.

She was a workaholic in her late 60s who was always prepared to complete any assignment put in front of her. One of her favorite pastimes was singing, and she’d always loved to lift my spirits with upbeat tunes.

Yet it brings a tear to my eye that she couldn’t have seen her little princess grow up in front of her eyes. It was so devastating that she departed so suddenly without saying goodbye and without knowing how she died.

It was subsequently determined that she died of incurable and advanced-stage breast cancer before it could reach her or any of our awareness; in the end, she died in solitude.

The doctor indicated that the discovery of this condition occurred at an inopportune moment and that her prospects for life were already dwindling.

I often wish I could go back in time and assist in detecting her cancer a bit sooner. Who knows? That may have been extremely useful at the time. Even if it were possible, how would I have detected such an illness in such a short period of time? The question has haunted me for the past ten years, keeping me on my toes.

This post provides research on the latest analysis of the solution to the world’s second death-causing sickness: cancer

Cancer is a group of diseases rather than a single disease. Despite the problems that cancer presents, scientists and physicians strive to improve how it is diagnosed and treated. Cancer is expected to be the world’s second-biggest cause of death in 2020, killing over 10 million people. Breast cancer, lung cancer, and colon cancer are some of the most prevalent malignancies. Cancer is predicted to cost the global economy $1.16 trillion every year.

Yet, modern innovations such as artificial intelligence, DNA sequencing, precision oncology, and liquid and synthetic biopsies are assisting the globe in its fight against cancer.

Research also suggests that one-third of all deaths related to cancer could be prevented through routine screening, early detection, and treatment, saving millions of lives each year.

Going back to the persistent question that has bothered me for a while now, liquid biopsy has been proven to be a breakthrough in solving the long-standing problem of identifying a severe and fatal illness within a short period of time.

In this article, I will cover:

• Introduction to liquid biopsy and the term associated with it
• How it works (the fundamentals behind its working process)
• How effective can it be in detecting early stages of cancer(Using Tumor DNA)
• what are its recent advancements?
• Who are the companies pioneering it?
• Limitations and future aspirations

Introduction to Liquid Biopsy

When a patient has a suspicious lump or symptoms, one of the first things a doctor may do is perform a tissue biopsy, a procedure to collect cells for closer examination.

Examining the appearance of the cells under the microscope can help determine if cancer is present, show what type of cancer it is, and give clues about the patient’s prognosis. In addition, molecular analysis of a tissue biopsy sample can also reveal information that may help guide a personalized treatment strategy.

Although important for patient care, tissue biopsies—which may involve a large needle, an endoscope, or open surgery—can be invasive, risky, costly, and painful. And some patients may not be able to have a tissue biopsy due to the inaccessibility of their tumors or because they have other health conditions that prevent them from undergoing the procedure.

Because these factors make it difficult to perform repeated biopsies on a patient, these tests can be an impractical method to track tumors as they develop and change over time. Nevertheless, they remain the gold standard for detecting and obtaining cancer information.

But researchers have been exploring a new approach that could potentially complement or, in some cases, serve as an alternative to tissue biopsies.

Liquid biopsy is a recent innovation that uses a blood test to detect cancerous tumors. As a tumor grows, pieces can break off and circulate in your bloodstream. A liquid biopsy can identify those pieces. Liquid biopsies can detect:

circulating tumor cells (CTCs): A CTC is a cancer cell from the tumor that’s traveling through your bloodstream.

Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA): ctDNA is a DNA fragment from the tumor cell circulating in your blood. DNA contains the genetic code, or instructions, that control a cell’s behavior.

CTCs and ctDNA in your blood prove you have a cancerous tumor. These pieces of your tumor also provide genetic information about cancer that can help your healthcare provider decide what treatments may work best to treat it.
Liquid biopsy is a relatively new test with several potential groundbreaking uses in cancer treatment and a few US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved uses. Research into its benefits is ongoing

How It Works (The fundamental behind its working process)

A liquid biopsy test involves a simple blood draw. Your healthcare provider will take a blood sample and send it to a lab for testing. In the lab, a machine will separate the blood cells (the solid part of your blood) from the plasma (the liquid part of your blood). A specialist trained to analyze fluid and tissue samples for signs of disease (a pathologist) will look for CTCs or ctDNA in the plasma.

• Doctors will be better able to select the appropriate course of treatment for each patient at the appropriate time with the aid of a liquid biopsy test that can identify epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene mutations, which affect 10–35 percent of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
• Early studies on liquid biopsies focused largely on lung, breast, and prostate cancers, but it is anticipated that this technology will influence all forms of cancer.
• A non-invasive method for precise NSCLC identification and enhanced patient monitoring is a liquid biopsy.

Liquid biopsies are far more tolerable and less time-consuming than surgical biopsies since they are non-invasive and only need 5 milliliters of blood.

• When the blood sample is “spun down,” 2 milliliters of plasma are obtained, which may be used to test for tumor DNA.

• For patients, comfort and tolerability are important advantages.
• The ability of liquid biopsies to identify disease progression or treatment resistance well in advance of the onset of clinical symptoms or the appearance of abnormalities on imaging tests is the largest advantage.
• The majority of cancers have several genetic abnormalities, some of which may not be present across the entire malignancy.
• Liquid biopsies have a better probability of identifying these genetic alterations than tissue samples taken for biopsy since they may not always reveal all abnormalities.

“Liquid biopsies could be a game-changer in cancer testing,” said Miro Venturi,

Roche’s Head of Head Diagnostics Biomarkers also says: “In terms of patient acceptability and disease management, the benefits of non-invasive, quick, and easily repeatable tests are clear.”

And in the longer term, liquid biopsies may ultimately be used to catch signs of cancer early, before symptoms arise. “This could make a significant difference to the way we understand and treat cancer.”

How does a liquid biopsy compare to traditional cancer detection methods like tissue
biopsies?

• By examining genetic material, a tissue or liquid sample obtained during a biopsy is examined for malignancy.

Whole genome sequencing (WGS), a popular technique for analysis, maps the genome of an organism and detects certain mutations linked to cancer.

Exons, or regions of DNA, have been sequenced in research, and markers linked to certain cancer types have been discovered, such as the protein HER2 in breast cancer.

• In oncology, genetic sequencing is used for a variety of applications with liquid biopsies.

They can be used specifically as a screening technique for early detection, either by checking the sample as a whole for mutations or by searching for particular variants.

Moreover, liquid biopsies are essential for pinpointing a patient’s recurrence and following it during treatment.

In each of these situations, genomic changes of interest are found using WGS techniques.

Due in part to WGS automation procedures, liquid testing also takes a considerably smaller sample than tissue biopsies and yields findings much more quickly.

Liquid biopsies are especially useful when a tumor has metastasized or spread to multiple areas of the body.

The collection of tissue from every tumor for investigation is usually not practicable or even feasible.

• Liquid biopsies are therefore more favorable to demonstrate an overview of the mutations present in each tumor location or when cancers are in difficult-to-reach areas where cfDNA must be used instead of needles or surgical procedures to collect tissue

The extremely poor detection sensitivity and restricted availability of cfDNA in liquids are a problem.

For instance, research on prostate cancer revealed that only 7.5% of patients had matching mutations discovered by two different liquid biopsy firms.

This suggests that a random sample may under or overrepresent some mutations.

CTCs or ctDNA may have originated from a non-threat source, or the genes contained within them may have originated from a very small portion of the tumor.

It’s also possible that the sample may not accurately reflect the mutations that are present in a tumor.

When determining the kind of cancer, the tumor’s gene expression, and the existence of medication-resistant mutations, tissue samples are crucial.

Nevertheless, that depends on several underlying factors, including the tumor’s location, the amount of tissue present, and the ease of surgical removal.

Tumors are heterogeneous because of their instability, which implies that tissue from one location of the tumor may have dramatically different mutations and genetic expressions than tissue from other places.

This conveys false information.

How effective can it be in detecting early stages of cancer(Using Tumor DNA)

The early detection of cancer, when therapy may be most effective, is one possible use for ctDNA-based liquid biopsies.

For instance, in numerous trials, liquid biopsy testing identified ctDNA in blood samples taken from patients months before they received a cancer diagnosis using conventional techniques like imaging tests.

Nevertheless, in these investigations, the tests occasionally yielded false-positive results, which is to say that they found malignant DNA even if no cancer had manifested.

Another issue is that these tests may identify early-stage cancers that won’t spread or won’t spread quickly enough to endanger the patient.

In fact, treating these slowly expanding tumors can have the opposite effect of what is intended.
“the potential of overtreatment is a key worry with early cancer discovery,” according to Dr. Sorbara. “It has not yet been proven that liquid biopsy alone can accurately diagnose a patient.”

“We still have a long way to go and are in the early phases,” she went on.

To fully establish if the presence of ctDNA in a patient’s blood can be used as a reliable predictor for early-stage cancer, she continued, prospective cohort studies are required.

Studies are required, for instance, to evaluate if the presence of ctDNA justifies therapy and whether such treatment enhances patient outcomes.

A project to enhance the development and validation of liquid biopsy technologies, which can identify fast- and slow-growing tumors and diagnose cancer in its early stages, is supported by the NCI.

The initiative’s creation of a public-private partnership that brings engineering and clinical specialists together to achieve these objectives is one of its main goals.

In the future, Dr. Sorbara sees liquid biopsy testing being used to screen for early-stage cancer in those who are at high risk, such as those who have genetic cancer syndromes.

Instead, she added, they might be used in conjunction with other exams, like an MRI.

In healthy people, a liquid biopsy test, for example, could be used as a standard prescreening technique to detect those who may have early-stage cancer and are candidates for further screening procedures (which could be more expensive or invasive).

Current Application of Liquid Biopsies

Liquid biopsies are increasingly being employed for cancer genomic profiling, allowing for a precision oncology approach.

Circulating extracellular nucleic acids (cfDNA), circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), and circulating tumor cells (CTCs) may all be recovered from blood and other bodily fluids

Many techniques have been used to isolate and analyze ctDNA and cfDNA, including droplet digital polymerase chain reaction, beads, emulsion, amplification, and magnetics (BEAMing), tagged-amplicon deep sequencing (TAm-Seq), cancer personalised profiling by deep sequencing (CAPP-Seq), whole genome bisulfite sequencing (WGBS-Seq), whole exome sequencing (WES), and whole genome sequencing (WGS).

CTCs were obtained using biomarker-based cell capture and positive or negative enrichment based on biophysical and other features.

Numerous clinical applications are being made of ctDNA/cfDNA and CTCs, including: differentiating individual immune checkpoint blockade response patterns using serial samples; predicting immune checkpoint blockade response based on baseline liquid biopsy characteristics; predicting response and resistance to targeted therapy, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy, including CAR-T cells, based on serial sampling; evaluating shed DNA from multiple metastatic sites; and evaluating p53 expression.

Moreover, cfDNA evaluation in all malignancies might be complicated by clonal hematopoiesis of unclear potential, especially in the elderly. The latter can be constrained by the tiny amounts of tumor-derived components released into the blood.

CTCs are more difficult to separate than cfDNA, but they allow for functional tests as well as an examination of CTC-derived DNA, RNA, and proteins, including single-cell analysis.

Blood biopsies are less intrusive than tissue biopsies and may thus be collected in serial, providing essential molecular information in real-time.

To sum up, liquid biopsy is a strong tool, and amazing developments in this technology have touched numerous facets of precision oncology, from early detection to the management of resistant metastatic illness.

Recent advancements

Liquid biopsy is a minimally invasive test for cancer genetic status that uses circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), circulating tumor cells, or other tumor-derived components in blood plasma to determine the presence of cancer.

Although the minimal invasiveness and temporal resolution of liquid biopsy are appealing, the small quantity of ctDNA in plasma offers challenges.

Recent advancements in digital PCR and next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based technologies have enhanced liquid biopsy accuracy.

In particular, molecular barcoding technology in NGS-based methods, i.e., the in situ tagging of molecular barcodes to cell-free DNA before amplification, reduces technical errors by validating the consensus of sequences originating from a single molecule, resulting in a significant improvement in accuracy and detection limit.

The sensitive identification of mutations on ctDNA is nevertheless hampered by somatic mutations occurring in healthy cells and substitutions brought on by DNA damage.

A greater comprehension of ctDNA biology and more sophisticated analysis techniques are required for the practical implementation of liquid biopsy because there have only been a few clinical applications.
“Liquid biopsy tests have the added advantage of providing molecular information about cancer, which can change during and after treatment.”

-Brian Sorg, Ph.D.

Who are the companies pioneering it?

• Exosome Mursla Quantum perception

Many biomarkers are used in liquid biopsies to diagnose diseases.

Particularly, liquid biopsy businesses have a chance to provide novel treatments by investigating indicators like exosomes.

Mursla, a UK-based firm, introduces NPQuantumSense, an on-chip technology for blood-circulating cancer-specific exosome-based non-invasive cancer diagnosis.

• Circulating Tumor DNA: Lucence

An essential biomarker for the diagnosis and prognosis of cancer is circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), which is found in the circulation.

Either tumors or blood-circulating tumor cells are the source of this circulating DNA.

• Circulating tumor cells (CTC) captured with SmartCatch

The amount of biomarkers present in physiological fluids has a significant impact on the accuracy and specificity of diagnostic tests.

It is challenging to identify cancer early—a struggle that claims millions of lives every year. Liquid biopsy biomarkers such as CTCs are found in the range of 1–10 CTCs in 5 ml of blood.

A CTC capture device is offered by the French firm SmartCatch, which focuses on compactness and deformability.

• Circulating Free DNA & RNA in Predicine

Free DNA (cfDNA) and RNA (cfRNA) that circulate in bodily fluids like blood or urine help with the thorough profiling of cancer.

GeneRADAR is a patented liquid biopsy test created by the US-based firm Predicine for early cancer diagnosis, illness monitoring, and residual disease evaluation.

To better understand the disease’s genetic profile and functional biology, their approach identifies cfDNA and cfRNA biomarkers.

• High Detection Sensitivity using GENECAST

Identification of cancer at an early stage is critical to lowering the disease’s fatality rate.

To address this issue, entrepreneurs are focusing not just on developing novel cancer biomarkers but also on improving the sensitivity of existing liquid biopsy procedures.

GENECAST, a South Korean firm, is developing the Allele-Discriminating Priming System (ADPS), a patented technology with a detection sensitivity of 0.0001%.

Limitations and future aspirations

LIMITATIONS:
Liquid biopsies based on ctDNA have a wide range of possible uses, but they also have certain restrictions.

Most cancer types lack well-established biomarkers that enable scientists to recognize and monitor the disease using ctDNA (such as a particular DNA mutation).

For instance, a biomarker frequently used to monitor advanced pancreatic cancer is regarded as inaccurate for the disease’s early identification.

While the technology for detecting ctDNA in bodily fluids has advanced significantly, Dr. Dickherber said that “the understanding necessary to find suitable biomarkers for many cancer types has not emerged.”

A specific mutation could be frequent for one form of cancer, yet many individuals with that cancer type may not have it since DNA mutations differ even among patients with the same cancer type.

Finding ctDNA biomarkers for every type and stage of cancer is becoming more difficult due to this.

Dr. Ossandon suggested “that combining tissue and liquid biopsies may be one answer”.

He added that a tissue biopsy may first be used to pinpoint specific biomarkers for a specific patient’s tumor, and that liquid biopsy testing could then be used to follow those biomarkers.

Another drawback is that ctDNA in the blood may not accurately reflect DNA in the actual tumor, making it a less reliable source of data for making therapeutic decisions.

Since tumors are heterogeneous—meaning cancer cells within a single tumor have different DNA mutations—it is unknown whether the entire tumor or only a portion of it releases ctDNA.

Furthermore, it is not known if the mutations discovered in the ctDNA are “driver” mutations — those that are crucial to the biology of the malignancy, says Dr. Sorbara.

Instead, they might be “passenger” mutations or alterations that come along with the onset of cancer but have no influence over how quickly it spreads.

The ASCO and CAP investigations also discovered that the accuracy of these new tests is in doubt because the findings of the majority of liquid biopsy tests don’t exactly match the outcomes of tissue biopsies.

The experts pointed out that this discrepancy may be caused by test limits or biological variations (between blood and tissue samples, for example).

If liquid biopsy testing might increase patient survival, it is conceivably the largest unresolved issue, according to Dr. Roschewski.

Can employing liquid biopsy tests to identify early-stage cancer, pick a course of therapy, or monitor the course of the illness eventually increase patient survival or raise their quality of life?

The experts from ASCO and CAP are among the many academics who concur that there is a need for studies that prospectively examine how liquid biopsy tests affect clinical outcomes

For instance, Stanford University and the National Cancer Institute are in charge of a clinical trial to assess the clinical response and overall survival of patients who receive targeted therapy based on genetic data discovered by a tissue or liquid biopsy test.

Adults with metastatic solid tumors are presently enrolled in the experiment as of October 2017.

FUTURE ASPIRATIONS:

In oncology, the use of cfDNA as a liquid biopsy analyte has increased. The process of using cfDNA testing for clinical cancer diagnosis, therapy, and the prognosis is depicted in Figure 2. Cancer status may be assessed through cfDNA testing. If the person has cancer, it would be more appropriate to know what type of cancer it is, where the lesion is located, what stage the disease is in, and the recommended course of treatment. Based on cfDNA detection, the prognosis of patients may be assessed and tracked after therapy, either in real-time or over an extended period. Real-time cfDNA monitoring enables actions to be performed in time for the patient’s continued care in the event of recurrence or metastasis.

More than 300 clinical studies are now underway or actively seeking participants to study the diagnostic and prognostic value of cfDNA in cancers (Figure 3). Yet we still need to learn more about cfDNA. In the future, sample gathering, cfDNA isolation (improving the yield of all pertinent fragment sizes), and data processing should be prioritized. In addition, more study is required to comprehend the biological characteristics of ctDNA (e.g., the release and clearance mechanisms). To further support the clinical use of liquid biopsy, it is also important to validate the clinical validity and applicability of cfDNA as a biomarker.

Figure 2

The workflow of cfDNA tests in clinical diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis for cancer

Figure 3. Current clinical trials using cfDNA in cancer settings. See the website (clinicaltrials.gov, accessed on May 12, 2022) for details of the trials. A search performed on 12 May 2022

As a result,

Circulating tumor markers used in liquid biopsies will continue to play an increasingly important role in the early detection of cancer. Shortly, advances in technology and falling costs may make liquid biopsy a very sensitive and precise technique for assisting in the early detection of cancer. It will as well make, a liquid biopsy of circulating tumor markers may become a highly sensitive and targeted technique to aid in the early diagnosis of cancer. It might be used as part of extensive population screening and monitoring to conduct preventative health or wellness assessments.

The best strategies for using liquid biopsy to enhance patient care should be considered in screening procedures, including a focus on particular patient characteristics or cancer types, taking into account how and when results are combined with other clinical data, and figuring out how frequently testing is necessary.

Further investigation is needed to understand the barriers to the widespread adoption of liquid biopsy panels and to clinically validate these panels.

I prominently desire that such an innovation had been made a little earlier. When I think about this fantastic advancement and consider the period of my poor grandmother, I feel that it would be of great assistance to her at that period.
But taking into account both the present situation and the past, helps me to understand that certain things must occur for the benefit of others.

But, It is just a matter of time until this less invasive liquid biopsy becomes a key aspect of clinical and precision medicine as the consistency of detected driving differences between cfDNA and solid biopsy rises. Only until the clinical efficacy and clinical usefulness of cfDNA as a liquid biopsy biomarker have been demonstrated will it be able to realize its full potential and provide major improvements to the clinical treatment of genome-driven oncology and cancer patients.

Thank you for reading💖; please follow, like👍, and share the post.

Hearing this topic of disruption, brings me to so many thoughts and concerns, to me, it is also partly a question about Tesla, but it’s more attractive as a way to think about what happens when ‘software eats the world’ in general, and when tech moves into new industries. How do we think about whether something is disruptive? If it is, who exactly gets disrupted? And does that disruption mean that one company wins in the new world? Which one?

To begin: the idea of ‘disruption’ is that a new concept changes the basis of competition in an industry. At the start, either the new thing itself or the companies bringing it (or both) tend to be bad at the things the incumbent value. Conversely, the incumbents either dismiss the new thing as pointless or presume, they’ll easily be able to add it (or both) but that seems to be wrong. Apple brought software and learnt phones, whereas Nokia had great phones but could not learn the software.

However, not every new technology or idea is disruptive. Some things do not change the basis of competition enough, and for some things, the incumbents can learn and absorb the new concept instead (these are not quite the same thing). But before we go further let's learn a little bit about tesla

Tesla, Inc. is an American multinational automotive, artificial intelligence, and clean energy company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Tesla designs and manufactures electric vehicles (electric cars and trucks), battery energy storage from home to grid-scale, solar panels and roof tiles, and related products and services. Tesla is one of the world’s most valuable companies and is, as of 2023, the world’s most valuable automaker. In 2021, the company had the most worldwide sales of battery-electric vehicles and plug-in electric vehicles, capturing 21% of the battery-electric (purely electric) market and 14% of the plug-in market (which includes plug-in hybrids). Through its subsidiary Tesla Energy, the company develops and is a major installer of photovoltaic systems in the United States. Tesla Energy is also one of the largest global suppliers of battery energy storage systems, with 3.99 gigawatt-hours (GWh) installed in 2021. Over the years tesla has without a doubt, done more than just produce self-driving cars.

It also helped in ensuring a clean energy system(Tesla energy), a major installer of photovoltaic systems in the United States, a global supplier of battery energy storage systems, battery electric and plug-in electric vehicles, which has indeed been proven to be sustainable. So what makes Tesla disruptive?

On seeing this Clay Christensen refers to this as ‘sustaining innovation’ instead of ‘disruptive innovation’.

By extension, any new technology is probably disruptive to someone, at some part of the value chain. The iPhone disrupted the handset business but has not disrupted the cellular network operators at all, though many people were convinced that it would. (For all that’s changed, the same companies still have the same business model and the same customers that they did in 2006.) Online flight booking didn’t disrupt airlines much, but it was hugely disruptive to travel agents. Online booking (for the sake of argument) was sustaining innovation for airlines and disruptive innovation for travel agents.

Meanwhile, the people who are first to bring the disruption to market may not be the people who end up benefiting from it, and indeed the people who win from the disruption may actually be doing something different — they may be in another part of the value chain. Apple pioneered PCs but lost the PC market, and the big winners were not even other PC makers: rather, most of the profits went to Microsoft and Intel. Being first is not the same as having a sustainable competitive advantage.

I feel that when it comes to the topic of Tesla’s innovation four important things should be considered:

• First, it does have to learn the ‘old’ things — it has to learn how to make cars at scale with the efficiency and quality that the existing car industry takes for granted, preferably without running out of cash on the way. But, solving ‘production hell’ is just a condition of entry — it’s not victory. If it can only do this, it’s just another car company, and that’s not what has anyone excited. It’s what the cars are that matters.
• Second, Tesla also has to be doing new things that the incumbent car OEMs will struggle to learn. This is not quite the same as doing things that the OEMs’ current suppliers will struggle to learn — is it easy for the OEMs to buy the new things?
• Third, those disruptive things need to be fundamentally important — they need to be enough to change the basis of competition, and to change what it is to be a car and a car company so that it matters if they can’t be copied.
• Fourth, in addition to all of these, there needs to be some fundamental competitive advantage, not just over the existing car industry but also over other new entrants. Apple did things Nokia could not do, but it also does things that Google cannot do.

References:
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2018/8/29/tesla-software-and-disruption
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.

Contrary to the world’s view of women in technology, women are an integral part of digitalization and this needs to be made evident. They should be given a haven — a place in the world.

We as a people have to come together to see how this can be made possible. it is firmly believed that only by enforcing and setting down certain ideologies will our goal be achieved.

This includes women having a presence. The main issue lies in the fact that women have little presence in things about technological advancement, and can thus be easily overlooked. For women to be secure in the digital world, they need to have an irrefutable presence.

This can be done through proper acknowledgement of women’s successes and breakthroughs — no matter how seemingly insignificant. The same importance is placed on the achievements of the male

Women seem to have the lesser privilege to access, participate or contribute to technology than men. Which makes women less motivated or encouraged to deal with the work of technology. So, therefore, Government should put in place organizations that will help motivate and encourage women into ICT.

Moreso, women need more information concerning the changes in technology in our society. Information and enlightenment on technology need to be open to women, and should also be taken into consideration by the government and other stakeholders in the country, to boost their knowledge in ICT.`

Furthermore, more women need to be given extra resources in the participation and involvement of ICT. A lot of women like to be adventurous and eager to know more about the works of technology but without the proper resources the knowledge of ICT. So to enhance their productivity in the digital world, more research institutes and tech organizations/companies around the country need to help provide resources such as tech schools, equipment, and boot camps/training institutes that will help build their experience in ICT.

Also, Programs, seminars, and workshops should be provided by government officials and other stakeholders in the country, to enlighten and also appreciate women and other female tech entrepreneurs for their work in their various societies.

In conclusion, Privacy and security on the internet should be taken into cognizance. As most women tend to face issues regarding freedom of speech, protection of vital information online, the privacy of communication, and some insecure online spaces happening on the internet. So authorities and judicial action need to be taken and more laws should be enforced in order to stop some notorious acts happening on the internet. So let’s join hands and ensure a more secure world for women.