Figure 1. Clinical applications of liquid biopsy in pediatric oncology.

Liquid biopsies capture genetic material shed throughout the body, enabling non-invasive molecular profiling without the confounding variable of tumor heterogeneity. Liquid biopsies can therefore inform care and treatment selection at diagnosis, monitor clonal evolution during treatment, sensitively detect minimum residual disease following local control and provide sensitive post-therapy surveillance. Multiple studies have demonstrated that liquid biopsies have the potential to detect relapsed disease before radiographically evident.