Plenary session II

I first discovered the presence of cell-free fetal DNA in maternal plasma in 1997.In this lecture, I would like to talk about the pathway in which I have translated this discovery into a new platform for non invasive prenatal testing (NIPT).I shall further discuss the extension of this technology to other areas of molecular diagnostics, such as for the early detection of cancer.I shall discuss recent developments in an emerging field called cell-free DNA (cfDNA) fragmentomics, in which the fragmentation patterns of cfDNA molecules are studied and used to trace the tissue of origin of such molecules.In summary, recent enhancements in our toolbox for analysing cfDNA have the potential to further integrate cfDNA diagnostics to result in clinical impact.