We appreciate Yu and colleagues for their interest in our study and we would like to give our reply to their concerns.

In LUNGCA-1 study, a total of 330 patients with resected tumor tissues and preoperative blood samples available were included in prognostic analysis, and all but one of these 330 patients had at least one available plasma sample at postoperative 3 days and/or 1 month (1). Thus, preoperative circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) and postoperative ctDNA-based molecular residual disease (MRD) analysis was done for 330 and 329 patients respectively, as reflected in the number of patients in both Fig. 1 and detailed sample information listed in Supplementary Table S5. LUNGCA-1 study was aimed at evaluating the potential of ctDNA-based MRD during perioperative period for predicting disease relapse and identifying patients who may potentially benefit from adjuvant therapy, and throughout the entire article, there was no mentioning of ctDNA...

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