PLoS ONE (Jan 2024)

Analytical validation of a novel comprehensive genomic profiling informed circulating tumor DNA monitoring assay for solid tumors.

  • Daniel R Zollinger,
  • Elizabeth Rivers,
  • Alexander Fine,
  • Yanmei Huang,
  • Joseph Son,
  • Akshita Kalyan,
  • Wren Gray,
  • Golshid Baharian,
  • Carly Hammond,
  • Rosalyn Ram,
  • Lindsay Ringman,
  • Dina Hafez,
  • Daniel Savel,
  • Vipul Patel,
  • Marc Dantone,
  • Cui Guo,
  • Merrida Childress,
  • Chang Xu,
  • Dorhyun Johng,
  • Brett Wallden,
  • Prapti Pokharel,
  • William Camara,
  • Priti S Hegde,
  • Jason Hughes,
  • Corey Carter,
  • Nicole Davarpanah,
  • Viraj Degaonkar,
  • Pratyush Gupta,
  • Sanjeev Mariathasan,
  • Thomas Powles,
  • Sean Ferree,
  • Lucas Dennis,
  • Amanda Young

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0302129
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 19, no. 5
p. e0302129

Abstract

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Emerging technologies focused on the detection and quantification of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in blood show extensive potential for managing patient treatment decisions, informing risk of recurrence, and predicting response to therapy. Currently available tissue-informed approaches are often limited by the need for additional sequencing of normal tissue or peripheral mononuclear cells to identify non-tumor-derived alterations while tissue-naïve approaches are often limited in sensitivity. Here we present the analytical validation for a novel ctDNA monitoring assay, FoundationOne®Tracker. The assay utilizes somatic alterations from comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) of tumor tissue. A novel algorithm identifies monitorable alterations with a high probability of being somatic and computationally filters non-tumor-derived alterations such as germline or clonal hematopoiesis variants without the need for sequencing of additional samples. Monitorable alterations identified from tissue CGP are then quantified in blood using a multiplex polymerase chain reaction assay based on the validated SignateraTM assay. The analytical specificity of the plasma workflow is shown to be 99.6% at the sample level. Analytical sensitivity is shown to be >97.3% at ≥5 mean tumor molecules per mL of plasma (MTM/mL) when tested with the most conservative configuration using only two monitorable alterations. The assay also demonstrates high analytical accuracy when compared to liquid biopsy-based CGP as well as high qualitative (measured 100% PPA) and quantitative precision (<11.2% coefficient of variation).