Table 1.

Advantages and challenges of tissue and liquid biopsies.

Tissue Biopsy	Liquid Biopsy
Requires invasive procedure	Minimally invasive
Unable to capture tumour heterogeneity	Overcomes challenges of tumour heterogeneity
Unable to assess temporal genomic changes	Real time genomic monitoring and cancer evolution monitoring
Very low risk of false positives (CHIP)	Risk of false positives (CHIP)
Risk of non-diagnostic sample	Variable detection rate (dependant on stage, site of metastases, type of cancer)
Technical consideration for tissue processing required (storage of tissue, cutting, histopathological review)	Pre-analytical variable requirements (plasma storage, isolation, and processing)
Larger DNA collection and input for broad sequencing panels (including WES/WGS)	Variable DNA collection (possible limitations for WES/WGS)