Towards standardisation of cell-free DNA measurement in plasma: controls for extraction efficiency, fragment size bias and quantification.

ABSTRACT: Circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) is becoming an important clinical analyte for prenatal testing, cancer diagnosis and cancer monitoring. The extraction stage is critical in ensuring clinical sensitivity of analytical methods measuring minority nucleic acid fractions, such as foetal-derived sequences in predominantly maternal cfDNA. Consequently, quality controls are required for measurement of extraction efficiency, fragment size bias and yield for validation of cfDNA methods. We evaluated the utility of an external DNA spike for monitoring these parameters in a study comparing three specific cfDNA extraction methods [QIAamp circulating nucleic acid (CNA) kit, NucleoSpin Plasma XS (NS) kit and FitAmp plasma/serum DNA isolation (FA) kit] with the commonly used QIAamp DNA blood mini (DBM) k

SUBMITTER: Devonshire AS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4182654 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature