Early Cancer Detection

In early-stage cancer, it is difficult to detect cancer-derived circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in the blood because it may comprise only 0.01% of the DNA present among a background of 99.99% normal DNA. Moreover, most of the cancer DNA has exactly the same sequence as normal DNA.

Current ctDNA detection methods involve DNA extraction, sequencing of all (cancer and normal) circulating DNA and analysis of the sequencing data using sophisticated computer bioinformatics to tell them apart. Physical separation of tumor-derived and healthy circulating DNA has previously never been reported