About the Authors

Ashley A. Powell

Contributed equally to this work with: Ashley A. Powell, AmirAli H. Talasaz, Haiyu Zhang

Current address: Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America

Affiliation Department of Surgery, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America

AmirAli H. Talasaz

Contributed equally to this work with: Ashley A. Powell, AmirAli H. Talasaz, Haiyu Zhang

Current address: Department of Diagnostic Research, Illumina, Inc., Hayward, California, United States of America

Affiliations Stanford Genome Technology Center, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, United States of America, Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America

Haiyu Zhang

Contributed equally to this work with: Ashley A. Powell, AmirAli H. Talasaz, Haiyu Zhang

Affiliation Department of Surgery, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America

Marc A. Coram

Affiliation Department of Health Research and Policy (Biostatistics), Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America

Anupama Reddy

Current address: Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America

Affiliation BioMaPS Institute for Quantitative Biology, Department of Physics, Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey, United States of America

Glenn Deng

Current address: Cancer Research Institute, College of Medicine, Xiangfan University, Xiangyang, Hubei, China

Affiliation Department of Surgery, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America

Melinda L. Telli

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America

Ranjana H. Advani

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America

Robert W. Carlson

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America

Joseph A. Mollick

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America

Shruti Sheth

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America

Allison W. Kurian

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America

James M. Ford

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America

Frank E. Stockdale

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America

Stephen R. Quake

Affiliation Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America

R. Fabian Pease

Affiliation Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America

Michael N. Mindrinos

Affiliation Stanford Genome Technology Center, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, United States of America

Gyan Bhanot

Affiliations BioMaPS Institute for Quantitative Biology, Department of Physics, Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey, United States of America, Cancer Institute of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States of America, Simons Center for Systems Biology, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America

Shanaz H. Dairkee

ssj@stanford.edu (SSJ); dbowe@stanford.edu (RWD); dairkes@cpmcri.org (SHD)

Affiliations Department of Surgery, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America, California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute, San Francisco, California, United States of America

Ronald W. Davis

ssj@stanford.edu (SSJ); dbowe@stanford.edu (RWD); dairkes@cpmcri.org (SHD)

Affiliation Stanford Genome Technology Center, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, United States of America

Stefanie S. Jeffrey

ssj@stanford.edu (SSJ); dbowe@stanford.edu (RWD); dairkes@cpmcri.org (SHD)

Affiliation Department of Surgery, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America

Competing Interests

Dr. Stefanie Jeffrey, Dr. Ashley Powell, Dr. AmirAli Talasaz, Dr. Michael Mindrinos, Dr. Fabian Pease, and Dr. Ronald Davis are inventors of the MagSweeper technology used in this study. Stanford University has licensed this technology to Illumina, Inc., and receives licensing royalties. Dr. Jeffrey has donated her royalties to support student programs at The Jackson Laboratory, a nonprofit biomedical research institution. Dr. AmirAli Talasaz is currently employed by Illumina. Dr. Stephen Quake is a co-founder of Fluidigm Corporation and member of its board of directors and scientific advisory board. Fluidigm chips were used in this study. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: SSJ AAP AHT HZ SHD MNM SRQ RFP RWD. Performed the experiments: AAP HZ GD. Analyzed the data: MAC AR GB HZ SSJ SHD. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MLT RHA RWC JAM SS AWK JMF FES SRQ. Wrote the paper: SSJ SHD AAP AHT MNM HZ. Invented the MagSweeper: AHT AAP MNM RFP RWD SSJ. Optimized MagSweeper configuration and performance: AAP AHT.