Abstract
The prevalence of cancer in our days remains at high level all over the world. Implementing and improving tools for better diagnostics and prognostics is a very active field of research aimed towards giving the patients the best possible management of their disease. Since the discovery of the presence of cell-free circulating DNA (ccfDNA) in the blood of cancer patients, it has been proposed as a tool for tumor diagnosis, follow-up of treatment and prognosis assessment. In fact, the strong link with molecular alterations found in the tumor has demonstrated effective as a prognostic tool specially regarding invasive types of cancers. Today, the circulating plasma tumor DNA (cptDNA), also known as liquid biopsy, promises an outstanding clinical test in routine cancer patient management, which is currently used in numerous clinical trials as a secondary parameter to follow outcome of the treatments being investigated. Besides describing patents covering specific markers, several patents have been recently filed for methods of cptDNA analysis. In this review, we aim to provide with a succinct summary of the current application of cptDNA as a tool for clinical management of the cancer patient.
Keywords: Circulating plasma tumor DNA, copy number variation, liquid biopsy, loss of heterozygosity, methylation, mutation, prognosis.
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