Table 2.

Whole-genome amplification (WGA) methods used for CTC analysis.

Method	Application	Advantage (s)
Pure PCR-based amplification	Amplifying specific sites in the genome	Better uniformity of amplification
MDA-based methods	Point mutations amplification to analyze the genome of patient-derived CTCs	Higher fidelity than PCR-based methods
MALBAC combining MDA and PCR-based methods	Analysis of single-nucleotide variants (SNVs)	Intermediate coverage and uniformity
LIANTI	Amplifies T7-promoter-tagged DNA fragments into thousands of RNA copies	Covers 97% of the genome with a reduced false-negative rate
GenomPlex and Ampli1	Copy-number variation (CNV) profiling	Significantly higher genomic coverage

Pure PCR-based amplification (DOP-PCR), multiple displacement amplification [70], degenerate oligonucleotide-primed polymerase chain reaction, multiple annealing- and looping-based amplification cycles (MALBAC), or linear amplification via transposon insertion (LIANTI).