TERT promoter mutation analysis for blood-based diagnosis and monitoring of gliomas
Recommended Citation
Muralidharan K, Yekula A, Small JL, Rosh ZS, Kang KM, Wang L, Lau S, Zheng H, Lee H, Bettegowda C, Chicoine MR, Kalkanis S, Shankar GM, Nahed BV, Curry WT, Jones PS, Cahill DP, Balaj L, and Carter BS. TERT promoter mutation analysis for blood-based diagnosis and monitoring of gliomas. Clin Cancer Res 2020.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-13-2020
Publication Title
Clinical cancer research
Abstract
PURPOSE: Liquid biopsy offers a minimally invasive tool to diagnose and monitor the heterogeneous molecular landscape of tumors over time and therapy. Detection of TERT promoter mutations (C228T, C250T) in cfDNA has been successful for some systemic cancers but has yet to be demonstrated in gliomas, despite the high prevalence of these mutations in glioma tissue (>60% of all tumors).
EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: Here, we developed a novel digital droplet PCR (ddPCR) assay, that incorporates features to improve sensitivity and allows for the simultaneous detection and longitudinal monitoring of two TERT promoter mutations (C228T and C250T) in cfDNA from the plasma of glioma patients.
RESULTS: In baseline performance in tumor tissue, the assay had perfect concordance with an independently performed clinical pathology laboratory assessment of TERT promoter mutations in the same tumor samples (95% CI 94%-100%). Extending to matched plasma samples, we detected TERT mutations in both discovery and blinded multi-institution validation cohorts with an overall sensitivity of 62.5% (95% CI 52%-73%) and a specificity of 90% (95% CI 80%-96%) compared to the gold standard tumor tissue-based detection of TERT mutations. Upon longitudinal monitoring in 5 patients, we report that peripheral TERT mutant allele frequency reflects the clinical course of the disease with levels decreasing after surgical intervention and therapy and increasing with tumor progression.
CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrate the feasibility of detecting circulating cfDNA TERT promoter mutations in glioma patients with clinically relevant sensitivity and specificity.
PubMed ID
33051308
ePublication
ePub ahead of print
