Plasma circulating cell‐free MYCN gene: A noninvasive and prominent recurrence monitoring indicator of neuroblastoma

Abstract The postoperative recurrence of neuroblastoma (NB) patients is an essential reason for the high mortality of NB due to the lack of early, non‐invasive, and dynamic strategies for monitoring NB recurrence. Therefore, whether the plasma circulating cell‐free MYCN gene as an indicator for monitoring of NB recurrence was systematically evaluated. The MYCN copy number and NAGK (reference gene) copy number (M/N) ratio in plasma and corresponding tumor tissues of NB patients was detected using an economical, sensitive, and specific single‐tube dual RT‐PCR approach developed in this study. The plasma M/N ratio of the MYCN gene amplification (MNA) group (N = 25, median M/N ratio = 4.90) was significantly higher than that of the non‐MNA group (N = 71, median M/N ratio = 1.22), p