Table 3.

Clinical application of cfDNA/ctDNA in PC in recent years

	Testing methods	Markers	Number of patients	Stages	Findings	Year of report	Ref
Diagnosis	ddPCR	KRAS	105	all stages PDAC	ddPCR increased the sensitivity and accuracy of EUS-FNA to 91.6% and 88.6%	2022	[113]
	methylation-specific PCR	ADAMTS1, BNC1	39	all stages PDAC	two-gene panel with highly promising sensitivity and specificity for detection of earliest stages of pancreatic cancer	2019	[114]
	methylation-specific PCR	BMP3, RASSF1A, BNC1, MESTv2, TFPI2, APC, SFRP1 and SFRP2	95	all stages PDAC	patients with PDAC have a highly significant number of hypermethylated genes compared to patients with benign pancreatic diseases	2016	[115]
Prognosis	ddPCR	KRAS	108	all stages PDAC	mutant-KRAS detection in the blood of PDAC patients is significantly associated with dismal prognosis for palliative and curative patients	2023	[116]
	NGS	TP53, KRAS	145	all stages PDAC	cases that had detectable plasma ctDNA showed significantly shorter recurrence-free survival	2022	[117]
	BEAMing	KRAS	61	metastatic PDAC	RAS mutation analysis in cfDNA more accurately predicted the prognosis than tissue analysis	2020	[44]
	ddPCR	KRAS	104	metastatic PDAC	patients with metastases and detectable ctDNA had significantly shorter progression-free survival and overall survival times than patients without detectable ctDNA	2019	[118]
Treatment	ddPCR	KRAS	70	metastatic PDAC	the change in magnitude of ctDNA during systemic treatment allows the prediction of treatment response and is associated with both overall survival and progression-free survival	2022	[119]
	dPCR	KRAS	47	metastatic PDAC	KRAS mutation in ctDNA during chemotherapy could be a predictive factor for the disease progression of patients with PDAC	2020	[120]
	PCR-based-SafeSeqS assays	KRAS	112	resectable PDAC	a 24% decrease in the proportion of patients with detectable ctDNA following surgery	2019	[121]
	ddPCR	KRAS	78	localized, metastatic, and recurrent PDAC	no detection or disappearance of KRAS ctDNA within 6 months of treatment was significantly correlated with therapeutic responses to first-line chemotherapy	2019	[41]