Toward the Early Detection of Cancer by Decoding the Epigenetic and Environmental Fingerprints of Cell-Free DNA

Overview

Journal Cancer Cell

Publisher Cell Press

Specialty Oncology

Date 2019 Oct 16

PMID 31614115

Citations 126

Authors

Ymke van der Pol

Florent Mouliere

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Widespread adaptation of liquid biopsy for the early detection of cancer has yet to reach clinical utility. Circulating tumor DNA is commonly detected though the presence of genetic alterations, but only a minor fraction of tumor-derived cell-free DNA (cfDNA) fragments exhibit mutations. The cellular processes occurring in cancer development mark the chromatin. These epigenetic marks are reflected by modifications in the cfDNA methylation, fragment size, and structure. In this review, we describe how going beyond DNA sequence information alone, by analyzing cfDNA epigenetic and immune signatures, boosts the potential of liquid biopsy for the early detection of cancer.

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