Urine-based tumour DNA detection enables non-invasive profiling of urological malignancies and may also inform on distant cancers via trans-renal cell-free DNA. However, limited large-scale validation and standardization of urinary cell-free DNA biomarkers constrain their clinical use, highlighting the need for a reporting framework. We therefore propose the ‘minimal urine methods in experiments’ (MUMIE) framework.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank K. Parekh for figure design, D. Gale, A. L’Hernault, R. Godin and R. Demers for expert insights, and M. Kushner for operational support.
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D.G.W. and R.T.B. receive royalties from Nonacus. R.D.M.S. is a minority shareholder of Self-screen BV. A.A.C. has issued and filed patents related to cancer biomarkers; has served as a consultant/advisor to Roche, Tempus, Guardant Health, Exact Sciences, Caris, Geneoscopy, Illumina, Myriad Genetics, Invitae, Daiichi Sankyo, AstraZeneca, AlphaSights, DeciBio and Guidepoint; has received honoraria from Agilent and Illumina; has received research support from Illumina, Roche and Tempus; has stock options in Geneoscopy; and has ownership interests in Droplet Biosciences, LiquidCell Dx and CytoTrace Biosciences. A.W.W. has served on advisory boards and/or received honoraria from AstraZeneca, Astellas, Bayer, EMD Serono, Janssen, Merck and Pfizer; and has contract research agreements (via institution) with ESSA Pharma, Tyra Biosciences and Promontory Therapeutics. L.D. has received research grants/support from Veracyte, C2i Genomics, Natera, AstraZeneca, Ferring and Photocure; has served as consultant for Ferring, UroGen, CystoTech, MSD and AstraZeneca; and has received speaker honoraria from Roche, Pfizer, and MSD. J.H., J.P.-B., D.M.V. and J.W. are employees of AstraZeneca. The other authors have no competing interest to declare.
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Nature Reviews Cancer thanks Muhammed Murtaza and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Ward, D.G., Bryan, R.T., Chaudhuri, A.A. et al. Unlocking the potential of urine-based liquid biopsy through improved reporting and standardization. Nat Rev Cancer 26, 79–80 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41568-025-00882-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41568-025-00882-z
