Ultra-deep amplicon sequencing to identify actionable mutations in matched plasma/tumor specimens from 44 patients with colorectal cancer of UICC stage III and IV.
3634 Background: Circulating cell-free DNA (cf-DNA) isolated from plasma samples of cancer patients (pts) is a promising source for noninvasive examination of tumor-specific mutation patterns. We examined the efficiency of ultra-deep amplicon sequencing (UDAS) of cf-DNA isolated from plasma and tumor DNA isolated from matched primary tumor tissue of pts with colorectal cancer (CRC). Methods: Blood was drawn prior to surgery from 44 pts: 20 male, 24 female; 44-79 years of age (median: 67.5); 11 stage III, 33 stage IV; 36 colon, 8 rectum tumors; no neo-adjuvant therapy. Cf-DNA was isolated from 2 ml of EDTA plasma. UDAS was applied to 72 DNA samples (44 plasma, 28 matched snap-frozen primary tumors) using the MiSeq platform (Illumina). A panel of 49 highly multiplexed amplicons was designed (Life Technologies) representing 9 cancer genes frequently mutated in CRC. For 16 primary tumors the mutation profile was determined using the TruSeq Amplicon Cancer Panel (Illumina). Results: Median cf-DNA yield was 310 ng / 2 ml plasma (1ng – 6.600 ng). There was no significant relation between cf-DNA yield and any clinical characteristic. Median amplicon coverage was 20.162 reads per bp (2.913 - 115.782). 33/49 amplicons (67%) had a coverage of > 10.000 reads. Altogether 61 high quality COSMIC-cited mutations were confirmed in plasma of 29/44 (66%) pts: 24/33 (73%) pts in stage IV, 5/11 (45%) pts in stage III. Confirmed mutations are: APC-17; BRAF-2, FBXW7-1, KRAS-15, NRAS-1, PIK3CA-4, SMAD4-2, and TP53-19 mutations. No high quality mutations were found in CTNNB1 and HRAS. Moreover two pts exhibited four high quality plasma mutations which were not detected in the matched primary tumor: APC (R216X), KRAS (Q61K), and SMAD4 (D355E); PIK3CA (E545K). Conclusions: Ultra deep amplicon sequencing is suitable to detect mutations in plasma samples of CRC pts with a high concordance to matched primary tumors. The concordance rate can be further increased by extending the spectrum of analyzed mutations or by the enrichment of cf-DNA tumor copies. This method could be applied to detect and monitor metastasis thus opening a new paradigm for the selection of pts for targeted therapies.