Analysis of Cell-free Epstein-Barr Virus-associated RNA in the Plasma of Patients with Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

Abstract
Chen et al. (1) and Nawroz et al. (2) have reported that tumor-derived DNA is detectable in the plasma and serum of cancer patients and have opened up a new molecular approach for the early detection of malignancy. It is not known, however, whether circulating tumor-derived RNA is also present in plasma, because of the lability of RNA. To address this possibility, we used nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) as a model system and attempted to detect Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-latent gene transcripts in cell-free plasma samples from NPC patients.