Pre-analytical requirements for analyzing nucleic acids from blood

Abstract

Circulating nucleic acids have received an increasing scrutiny over the past decade with some applications, such as in prenatal diagnosis and oncology, being on the verge of use in clinical practice. It is crucial to implement optimal standardization of pre-analytical procedures. Currently, this domain has been poorly studied and there is no well-established procedure. This chapter examines the literature on the pre-analytical factors affecting nucleic acids from blood drawing to the storage of circulating cell-free DNA extracts ready for analysis and provides some elements as guidelines for a set procedure. In particular, this chapter reports on the choice between serum and plasma as the biological source but does not concern the actual nucleic acid extraction procedures (these will be dealt with in chapter “Circulating DNA and miRNA Isolation”). Currently, the lack of a standard operating procedure for the application of blood handling in a clinical setting is due to the lack of dispensing and sharing data among researchers as well as head-to-head comparative studies between techniques. This has led to in-house specific procedures that are, undoubtedly, prejudicial to the smooth translation of nucleic acid analysis into clinical practice. Hence, the proposed procedure should overcome this gap in technique.