UW-Madison researchers have developed a method of diagnosing cancer through detection of specific fragmentation patterns of cell free DNA in plasma. Their approach is distinctly focused on positioning of plasma DNA fragment ends as well as the nucleic acid sequences at the ends of the DNA fragments. The average nucleotide frequency and the fraction of aberrant fragments are fed into an algorithm trained using genetic data from healthy people and cancer patients in order to determine the presence of cancer based on the fragmentation sequences. The researchers noted that the correlation between the sequence of the ends of the cell free DNA fragments and the presence of cancer is strong enough that very little sample is needed and full genome wide sequencing is not needed which should result in cost savings.