Mapping the breast cancer metastatic cascade onto ctDNA using genetic and epigenetic clonal tracking

Abstract

Tracking tumour evolution in a patient via circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) is complicated due to the unknown mix of fragmented alleles from different cancer lesions. Here, the authors make use of a rapid autopsy program to demonstrate how representative ctDNA profiling is of metastasis, as well as presenting methylation profiling method to track evolutionary change.