Abstract: The present invention provides a computer-implemented method for detecting variant nucleic acid from a cell-free nucleic acid-containing sample. The method comprises (a) providing data representing fragment sizes of nucleic acid fragments obtained from said sample and/or representing a measure of deviation from copy number neutrality of the nucleic acid fragments obtained from said sample; b) processing the data from step a) according to a classification algorithm, wherein said classification algorithm operates to classify sample data into one of at least a first class containing the variant nucleic acid and a second class not containing the variant nucleic acid, based on a plurality of cell-free nucleic acid fragment size features and/or a deviation from copy number neutrality feature; and c) outputting the classification of the sample from step b, thereby determining whether the sample contains the variant nucleic acid or not, or a probability that the sample contains the variant nucleic acid.

Abstract: The present invention provides a computer-implemented method for detecting cell-free DNA (cfDNA), such as circulating tumour DNA, in a DNA-containing sample obtained from a patient, the method comprising: (a) providing loci of interest comprising at least 2 mutation-containing loci representative of a tumour of the patient (“patient-specific loci”); (b) providing sequence data comprising sequence reads of a plurality of polynucleotide fragments from a DNA-containing sample from the patient, wherein said sequence reads span said at least 2 mutation-containing loci of step (a); (c) optionally, performing reads collapsing to group the sequence reads into read families; (d) calculating the mutant allele fraction across some or all of said at least 2 patient-specific loci, optionally wherein the mutant allele fraction is calculated by aggregating mutant reads and total reads; (e) classifying the sample as containing or not containing the target cfDNA based on the calculated mutant allele fraction.

Abstract: The present invention relates to methods for predicting the survival time of patients suffering from cancer. Said methods are based on the quantification and analysis of the cell free nucleic acids that are present in a sample from the patient and typically include the determination of the level of the mutant nucleic acid which contains a mutation of interest, the calculation of the mutation load for said mutation of interest, the calculation of the DNA integrity index or a combination thereof.