Extract Molecular analysis is increasingly integral to lung cancer evaluation and management 1. While evidence of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) has existed for decades 2, research in this field centers on ctDNA detection primarily in peripheral blood, which may present limitations. These include reduced sensitivity 3, 4, the potential of false negatives due to low tumor burden or shedding 5, and the possibility that lung compartmentalization may prevent cancer cells from appearing in systematic circulation 6. We hypothesized that bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) would exhibit an enrichment of lung cancer-derived cell-free DNA (cfDNA) detectable using digital PCR (dPCR), a precise method for nucleic acid quantification.
Priel et al. (Thu,) studied this question.