 This discovery was first made in lupus patients and later it was determined that the levels of cfDNA are elevated in over half of cancer patients.Molecular analysis of cfDNA resulted in an important discovery that blood plasma DNA from cancer patients contains tumor-associated mutations and it can be used for cancer diagnostics and follow up.The ability to extract circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) from the human plasma has led to huge advancements in noninvasive cancer detection.