Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT: Background
Liquid biopsy is a minimally-invasive method of sampling bodily fluids, capable of revealing evidence of cancer. The distribution of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) fragment lengths has been shown to differ between healthy subjects and cancer patients, whereby the distributional shift correlates with the sample's tumour content. These fragmentomic data have not yet been utilised to directly quantify the proportion of tumour-derived cfDNA in a liquid biopsy.Results
We used statistical learning to predict tumour content from Fourier and wavelet transforms of cfDNA length distributions in samples from 118 cancer patients. The model was validated on an independent dilution series of patient plasma.Conclusions
This proof of concept suggests that our fragmentomic methodology could be useful for predicting tumour content in liquid biopsies.
SUBMITTER: Cardner M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC10543881 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

Cardner Mathias M Marass Francesco F Gedvilaite Erika E Yang Julie L JL Tsui Dana W Y DWY Beerenwinkel Niko N
BMC bioinformatics 20230930 1
<h4>Background</h4>Liquid biopsy is a minimally-invasive method of sampling bodily fluids, capable of revealing evidence of cancer. The distribution of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) fragment lengths has been shown to differ between healthy subjects and cancer patients, whereby the distributional shift correlates with the sample's tumour content. These fragmentomic data have not yet been utilised to directly quantify the proportion of tumour-derived cfDNA in a liquid biopsy.<h4>Results</h4>We used statis ...[more]