ArticleCancer medicine2017
Preanalytical blood sample workup for cell-free DNA analysis using Droplet Digital PCR for future molecular cancer diagnostics.
Article in Cancer medicine, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 50 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
50 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 90 citations in OpenAlex.
- Clinical Practice Guideline for Blood-based Circulating Tumor DNA Assays.Annals of laboratory medicine · 2024Guideline
- Clinical Practice Guidelines for Pre-Analytical Procedures of Plasma Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Variant Testing.Annals of laboratory medicine · 2022Guideline
- Guidelines for pre-analytical conditions for assessing the methylation of circulating cell-free DNA.Clinical epigenetics · 2021Pooled it
- Specialized Blood Collection Tubes for Liquid Biopsy: Improving the Pre-analytical Conditions.Molecular diagnosis & therapy · 2020Pooled it
- Article
- Adapting Clinical Chemistry Plasma as a Source for Liquid Biopsies.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Preanalytical variables and analytes in liquid biopsy approach for brain tumors: A comprehensive review and recommendations from the RANO Group and the Brain Liquid Biopsy Consortium.Neuro-oncology · 2025Review
- Pre-analytical pitfalls: How blood collection tubes influence exercise-induced cell-free DNA concentrations.Experimental physiology · 2025Article
- Article
- Clinical Utility of ctDNA Analysis in Lung Cancer-A Review.Advances in respiratory medicine · 2025Review
- Evaluation of automatic cell free DNA extraction metrics using different blood collection tubes.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- International society of liquid biopsy (ISLB) perspective on minimal requirements for ctDNA testing in solid tumors.The journal of liquid biopsy · 2025Review
- Detection of Circulating Tumor DNA in Liquid Biopsy: Current Techniques and Potential Applications in Melanoma.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- Circulating tumor DNA laboratory processes and clinical applications in nasopharyngeal carcinoma.Frontiers in oncology · 2025Review
- Improvement of the sensitivity of circulating tumor DNA-based liquid biopsy: current approaches and future perspectives.Exploration of targeted anti-tumor therapy · 2025Review
- On-Chip Magnetic Extraction of Circulating Cell-Free DNA from Biological Samples.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2024Article
- The impact of preanalytical variables on the analysis of cell-free DNA from blood and urine samples.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2024Review
- The Position of Circulating Tumor DNA in the Clinical Management of Colorectal Cancer.Cancers · 2023Review
- The Clinical Utility of Droplet Digital PCR for Profiling Circulating Tumor DNA in Breast Cancer Patients.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Circulating tumor DNA in Hodgkin lymphoma.Annals of hematology · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In current molecular cancer diagnostics, using blood samples of cancer patients for the detection of genetic alterations in plasma (cell-free) circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) is an emerging practice. Since ctDNA levels in blood are low, highly sensitive Droplet Digital PCR (ddPCR) can be used for detecting rare mutational targets. In order to perform ddPCR on blood samples, a standardized procedure for processing and analyzing blood samples is necessary to facilitate implementation into clinical practice. Therefore, we assessed the technical sample workup procedure for ddPCR on blood plasma samples. Blood samples from healthy individuals, as well as lung cancer patients were analyzed. We compared different methods and protocols for sample collection, storage, centrifugation, isolation, and quantification. Cell-free DNA (cfDNA) concentrations of several wild-type targets and BRAF and EGFR-mutant ctDNA concentrations quantified by ddPCR were primary outcome measurements. Highest cfDNA concentrations were measured in blood collected in serum tubes. No significant differences in cfDNA concentrations were detected between various time points of up to 24 h until centrifugation. Highest cfDNA concentrations were detected after DNA isolation with the Quick cfDNA Serum & Plasma Kit, while plasma isolation using the QIAamp Circulating Nucleic Acid Kit yielded the most consistent results. DdPCR results on cfDNA are highly dependent on multiple factors during preanalytical sample workup, which need to be addressed during the development of this diagnostic tool for cancer diagnostics in the future.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.