Methods for profiling and quantitating cell-free RNA
AssigneeThe Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
InventorsLian Chye Winston Koh, Stephen R. Quake, Hei-Mun Christina Fan, Wenying Pan
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Abstract
The invention generally relates to methods for assessing the health of a tissue by characterizing circulating nucleic acids in a biological sample. According to certain embodiments, methods for assessing the health of a tissue include the steps of detecting a sample level of RNA in a biological sample, comparing the sample level of RNA to a reference level of RNA specific to the tissue, determining whether a difference exists between the sample level and the reference level, and characterizing the tissue as abnormal if a difference is detected.
Claims10
A method comprising:
- (a) selecting a human test subject suspected of having a neurological disorder;
- (b) obtaining a plasma or serum sample from the human test subject;
- (c) reverse transcribing cell-free messenger RNA in the plasma or serum sample to obtain total cDNA;
- (d) quantifying, in the total cDNA, an amount of at least one of CBLN1, FAM5B, GPR88, and NEUROD1 cDNA, the quantifying comprising at least one of:
- i) sequencing the cDNA or an amplification product thereof;
- and
- ii) performing Q-PCR on the on the cDNA
- (e) detecting a difference between the amount of the at the least one cDNA quantified in step (d) and an amount of the corresponding cDNA obtained by reverse transcribing cell-free messenger RNA in a control plasma or serum sample, wherein the control plasma or serum sample is from the human test subject at an earlier time point or from a healthy human subject;
- and
- (f) performing imaging or a biopsy of the brain of the human test subject.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.