Plasma cell‐free transcriptome profiling in blood plasma from chronic liver disease patients
Chronic liver disease (CLD) encompasses a wide range of hepatic disorders that progressively compromise liver function. To support the development of non-invasive diagnostic tools and improve patient stratification, we generated a high-throughput extracellular RNA sequencing dataset from blood plasma samples collected from patients at various stages of liver disease. Samples were obtained from two independent cohorts of 112 (cohort 1) and 489 (cohort 2) patients, and profiled using total RNA sequencing, resulting in 112 and 820 extracellular transcriptomic profiles for cohort 1 and 2, respectively. A median of 9,853 genes with counts >10 was detected in cohort 1, whereas for cohort 2 the median ranged from 5,889 to 6,998 across five sequencing runs. This dataset is provided with full documentation of the preprocessing analysis pipeline and accompanying metadata, enabling its use as an independent validation cohort for biomarker discovery and as a complementary resource for integrative multi-omics studies. The publicly available resource is intended to facilitate reproducibility and foster further research in liver disease diagnostics.
Authors
- Francisco Avila Cobos (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8816-9243)
- Nico Callewaert (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2069-6917)
- Kimberly Verniers (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7693-5908)
- Jasper Anckaert (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8144-4639)
- Leander Meuris (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8940-3022)
- Hanne Van Droogenbroeck (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6676-7077)
- Justine Nuytens (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4878-1200)
- Franco Poma-Soto (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9885-4431)
- Marieke Vromman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0163-0675)
- An Verrijken (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4098-8837)
- Anneleen Decock (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1091-0927)
- Luisa Vonghia (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3999-9259)
- Lotte Schoenmakers
- David Cassiman
- Eveline Dirinck
- Dirk De Bacquer
- Sven Francque
- Wilhelmus J. Kwanten
- Sarah M. Briké
- Jo Vandesompele (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6274-0184)
- Hans Van Vlierberghe
- Xavier Verhelst (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2798-5415)
Institutions
- Ablynx (Belgium) (BE)
- University of Antwerp (BE)
- Ghent University Hospital (BE)
- Ghent University (BE)
- Antwerp University Hospital (BE)
- Cancer Research Institute Ghent (BE)
- VIB-UGent Center for Medical Biotechnology (BE)
- KU Leuven (BE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Scientific Data
- Published
- 2026-05-22
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-07470-2
- Primary Topic
- Liver Disease Diagnosis and Treatment
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00