Quantitative detection of ALK fusion breakpoints in plasma cell-free DNA from patients with non-small cell lung cancer using PCR-based target sequencing with a tiling primer set and two-step mapping/alignment.

We demonstrated that PCR-based target sequencing using a tiling primer set and two-step mapping/alignment quantitatively detected ALK fusions in cfDNA from lung cancer patients. The system offers an alternative to existing approaches based on hybridization capture.