A comparison of four commercial kits used for isolating circulating cell-free DNA: QuickGeneMINI8L (Kurabo), Maxwell RSC cfDNA Plasma Kit (Promega), cfKapture 21 Kit (MagBio), and QIAamp MinElute ccfDNA Kit (Qiagen)

Abstract

A minimally-invasive alternative to surgical biopsies is a liquid biopsy (LB), a technique that has recently revolutionized the management of a number of tumors. One potential target biomarker of LB is cell-free DNA (cfDNA), which can act as a very sensitive indicator for certain tumors. Currently, clinical efforts are focused on increasing the quality of the cfDNA isolated for analysis. The present study compares the efficiency of isolation by four commercial kits: QuickGeneMINI8L (Kurabo), Maxwell RSC cfDNA Plasma Kit (Promega), cfKapture 21 Kit (MagBio), and QIAamp MinElute ccfDNA Kit (Qiagen). In each case, cfDNA was isolated from three plasma samples and one serum sample. Available method for the isolation give the ability to enrich optimal diagnostic quantity of cfDNA. cfDNA can be successfully separated using all investigated kits. The greatest efficiency was demonstrated by the QIAamp MinElute ccfDNA Kit (Qiagen) and cfKapture 21 (MagBio). Large amounts of cell-free DNA can be successfully isolated from small volumes of plasma.