{"entity":{"id":"paper-widman-mrd-edge-nat-med-2024","kind":"paper","name":"Ultrasensitive plasma-based monitoring of tumor burden using machine-learning-guided signal enrichment","aka":[],"tldr":"A machine-learning upgrade to whole-genome blood testing that strips out sequencing errors well enough to follow cancer without any tumour tissue.","summary":"MRD-EDGE is a machine-learning-guided whole-genome ctDNA platform for single-nucleotide and copy-number variants. Its SNV component uses deep learning and a ctDNA-specific feature space to raise signal-to-noise about 300-fold over earlier whole-genome error suppression; its copy-number component cuts the aneuploidy needed for detection from 1 Gb to 200 Mb. The authors used it to find residual disease after surgery in several cancers, track tumour fraction during neoadjuvant immunotherapy in lung cancer, show ctDNA shedding from precancerous colorectal adenomas, and monitor advanced melanoma and lung cancer on immune checkpoint inhibitors from plasma alone.","asOf":"2026-11-04","links":[{"label":"Widman et al., Nat Med 2024","url":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-03040-4"},{"label":"PubMed","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38877116/"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":["melanoma","nsclc","colorectal"],"sections":["diagnostics"],"technologies":["genome-wide-ctdna-mutation-integration","mrd-testing"],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":["ctdna","cfdna"],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":["nature-medicine"],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"journal":"Nature Medicine","year":2024,"doi":"10.1038/s41591-024-03040-4","pmid":"38877116","authors":"Widman AJ, Shah M, Frydendahl A, et al.","paperType":"methods","findings":["About 300-fold signal-to-noise enrichment over prior whole-genome error suppression.","Copy-number detection needs 200 Mb of aneuploidy rather than 1 Gb.","Plasma-only monitoring in melanoma and lung cancer on immunotherapy."],"whatItMeans":"Whole-genome methods can now follow cancer in blood without a tumour sample. Because each site is read about once, the result is how much tumour DNA there is, not which clone.","caveats":["The parts-per-million detection figures in the full text come from in silico admixtures."]},"route":"/key-papers/paper-widman-mrd-edge-nat-med-2024/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"colorectal","kind":"cancer","name":"Colorectal cancer","route":"/cancers/colorectal/"},{"id":"melanoma","kind":"cancer","name":"Melanoma","route":"/cancers/melanoma/"},{"id":"nsclc","kind":"cancer","name":"Non-small-cell lung cancer","route":"/cancers/nsclc/"}],"section":[{"id":"diagnostics","kind":"section","name":"Diagnostics & Biomarkers","route":"/fronts/diagnostics/"}],"technology":[{"id":"genome-wide-ctdna-mutation-integration","kind":"technology","name":"Genome-wide ctDNA mutation integration (MRDetect, MRD-EDGE)","route":"/technologies/genome-wide-ctdna-mutation-integration/"},{"id":"mrd-testing","kind":"technology","name":"MRD / molecular residual disease testing","route":"/technologies/mrd-testing/"}],"term":[{"id":"cfdna","kind":"term","name":"Cell-free DNA (cfDNA)","route":"/terms/cfdna/"},{"id":"ctdna","kind":"term","name":"Circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA)","route":"/terms/ctdna/"}],"journal":[{"id":"nature-medicine","kind":"journal","name":"Nature Medicine","route":"/journals/nature-medicine/"}]}}