Molecular analysis of circulating free nucleic acids and CTC genomes in patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma

Background: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has a very poor prognosis and a dismal 5-year survival rate (∼3%). Liquid biopsies are non-invasive and allow analysis of both cell-free circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) and/or circulating tumour cells (CTCs), for real-time disease monitoring. Next generation sequencing (NGS) allows us to analyse somatic genomic alterations, and copy number aberrations (CNA). We present data for a robust workflow using samples from PDAC patients in order to evaluate both ctDNA and CTC molecular analysis from the same blood tube.