Recent studies have used BEAMing (beads, emulsion, amplification and magnetics), peptide nucleic acid (PNA)-mediated polymerase chain reaction clamping method, and commercial kits such as the cobas EGFR mutation test and Scorpion ARMS-based EGFR mutation detection kit to successfully detect genetic changes in ctDNA from lung cancer patients14, 15, 16, 17. Here, EGFR is linked to lung cancer.