Use of cell free bacterial nucleic acids for detection of cancer

Abstract

Disclosed herein are compositions and methods for detecting the presence or absence of cancer or a specific cancer type in a subject. In some embodiments, the methods comprise obtaining cell-free nucleic acids present in a blood sample obtained from the subject, and detecting the presence or absence of nucleic sequences produced by bacteria associated with the specific cancer type in the sequenced cell free nucleic acids. Such information may be used to detect the presence or absence of cancer or a specific cancer type in a subject, e.g., in conjunction with somatic cell genetic information, which may be obtained, e.g., by capturing cell-free DNA using one or both of a sequence-variable target region set and an epigenetic target region set, which may be used to determine the presence or absence of sequence variants and/or epigenetic features indicative of the cancer or absence thereof.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.