Liquid biopsy such as plasma, has emerged as one of the most valuable sample types for profiling circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) for screening, response to treatment, and monitoring relapse in oncology patients. The non-invasive nature of the collection allows for broader sampling. Due to the diffuse nature of ctDNA both extraction and library preparation must be optimized for the efficient downstream next-generation sequencing (NGS) application. In pursuit of this, we followed a multi-step approach to optimize and automate the process of ctDNA extraction for high volume extraction (1-6ml). We then analyzed ctDNA to evaluate the mutation detection efficacy, repeatability, and reproducibility by targeted NGS using TSO 500ctDNA assay ay 10ng, 20ng, and 30ng inputs using a fully automated processes on the Beckman i5 robot.
