Abstract

Minimally invasive liquid biopsies have recently emerged as novel diagnostic methods which hold the promise to monitor disease progression, detect minimal residual disease, therapy resistance and potentially even early cancer detection. Participants will gain hands-on experience in the detection of cell free tumor DNA (cfDNA) using a next generation sequencing (NGS) approach that covers all four mutation classes in a single assay. Critical aspects on recent developments to increase analytical sensitivity and mitigate sequencing errors (computational error correction) will be discussed as well as annotation, interpretation, and clinical reporting of liquid biopsy tests. Lectures will cover the evaluation of ctDNA as biomarkers, clinical applications, emerging analytes for liquid biopsy and important challenges.