Abstract

Tissue and cfDNA Rare Alleles How Low Can We Go?

Seth Crosby, Director, Washington University School of Medicine

Discernment of rare alleles in circulating free DNA (cfDNA) may be a useful method for detecting the presence of new or recurring cancer long before it becomes symptomatic and, perhaps, when it is more treatable. Unfortunately the false-positive rate of current methods reduce specificity to an unacceptable level at allele frequencies of less than ~0.5%. I will discuss both bench and informatic methods used at Washington University to increase specificity in the apprehension of rare cfDNA alleles.