View this year’s Bothwell prize announcement here.
The 2024 Bothwell prize is awarded for a paper published by Muhammed Murtaza, the Director of the Center for Human Genomics and Precision Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, together with his colleagues.
In this paper, Budhraja et al report their latest findings on the development of a blood test able to diagnose cancer with great accuracy and sensitivity. By using big-data computational tools to combine features of the blood-borne, cell-free DNA fragment sequences, this group is now able to identify the aberrant DNA that is shed from a wide range of tumors, even at early stages of disease progression.
The paper illustrates how the method works for small blood samples carrying only traces of stable DNA fragments, and sets the stage for its widespread application.
Budhraja, K. K., B. R. McDonald, M. D. Stephens, T. Contente-Cuomo, H. Markus, M. Farooq, P. F. Favaro, S. Connor, S. A. Byron, J. B. Egan, B. Ernst, T. K. McDaniel, A. Sekulic, N. L. Tran, M. D. Prados, M. J. Borad, M. E. Berens, B. A. Pockaj, P. M. LoRusso, A. Bryce, J. M. Trent and M. Murtaza (2023). “Genome-wide analysis of aberrant position and sequence of plasma DNA fragment ends in patients with cancer.” Sci Transl Med 15(678): eabm6863.
