Droplet-Digital and Reverse Transcription Quantitative PCR Comparison for Circulating miR-371a-3p in Malignant Germ Cell Tumors

Previous work has shown that circulating miR-371a-3p has higher sensitivity and specificity than current biomarkers for malignant germ cell tumors (MGCT). Here, the performance of two methods commonly used to measure miR-371a-3p levels was compared: reverse transcription quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) and droplet-digital PCR (ddPCR). Samples from the University of Texas Southwestern (UTSW) Medical Center and the University of Cambridge (UoC) were evaluated using both RT-qPCR and ddPCR, as per current protocols (RT-qPCR) or standard manufacturer’s recommendations (ddPCR).