Abstract 3377: Liquid biopsy analysis reveals orthologs of actionable human cancer variants in dogs
Authors: Grosu Daniel S. , Chorny Ilya , Kruglyak Kristina M. , Tynan John A. , Hicks Susan C. , Cohen Todd A. , O'Kell Allison L. , Rafalko Jill M. , Chibuk Jason , McCleary-Wheeler Angela L. , Flory Andi , Tsui Dana W. 
Published: April 2023

Genotype-matched therapeutics have become widely adopted in the management of human cancers and can be guided by testing tumor tissue or cell-free DNA from plasma. OncoKB (Oncology Knowledge Base) is the first FDA-recognized database that contains information about these targetable somatic variants and corresponding therapeutic agents, including levels of evidence. Many of the human OncoKB variants have orthologs in the canine genome. This study was conducted to determine the feasibility of detecting these orthologs in dogs using liquid biopsy. This study involved two cohorts: The first was a cohort of 619 client-owned dogs with a variety of cancer diagnoses across all disease stages enrolled in a clinical validation study for a liquid biopsy test (herein the “research cohort”). All dogs had pre-treatment plasma samples collected at enrollment, and a subset of dogs also had matched tumor tissue collected. The second cohort comprised 457 client-owned dogs that had testing as part of the clinical deployment of the above-mentioned liquid biopsy test (herein the “clinical cohort”); 31% of these dogs had samples submitted as an aid in diagnosis (for dogs in which cancer was suspected clinically), and 69% had samples submitted for screening (in dogs with no a priori suspicion of cancer). Blood samples (and tumor samples, when available) were subjected to DNA extraction, proprietary library preparation, and next-generation sequencing. Sequencing data were analyzed using an internally developed bioinformatics pipeline to detect genomic alterations associated with the presence of cancer. Only canine orthologs of variants in the OncoKB database were evaluated in this study. Variants were called if they were observed in plasma at an allele frequency of at least 0.5%, with at least 6 unique supporting reads. Variants identified from plasma were subsequently genotyped in tissue without additional variant-level filtering. Analysis of plasma identified canine orthologs of OncoKB variants in ~8% of dogs in the research cohort, and ~4% of dogs in the clinical cohort. The higher percentage observed in the research cohort is likely due to the higher percentage of patients with confirmed cancer diagnosis. In the patients with an OncoKB ortholog in the research cohort, the dog had a cancer type that matched the human indication for the detected variant in 15% of cases. Of dogs in which an ortholog was identified in plasma, 44% had matched tumor tissue; and the variant observed in plasma was confirmed in tissue in &gt;50% of these subjects. This study demonstrates the feasibility of detecting canine orthologs of targetable human cancer somatic variants in the blood of dogs using next-generation sequencing. Although it is currently unclear how human databases can be used to inform targeted treatment decisions in dogs, these findings may have relevance for comparative oncology studies and future precision therapeutics development for both species.

Citation Format: Daniel S. Grosu, Ilya Chorny, Kristina M. Kruglyak, John A. Tynan, Susan C. Hicks, Todd A. Cohen, Allison L. O'Kell, Jill M. Rafalko, Jason Chibuk, Angela L. McCleary-Wheeler, Andi Flory, Dana W. Tsui. Liquid biopsy analysis reveals orthologs of actionable human cancer variants in dogs [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023; Part 1 (Regular and Invited Abstracts); 2023 Apr 14-19; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(7_Suppl):Abstract nr 3377.