Abstract 3570: Development and validation of a clinical next generation sequencing-based assay for hematologic malignancies
Authors: Lipson Doron , Nahas Michelle K. , Otto Geoff A. , He Jie , Wang Kai , Knapp Kristina M. , Brennan Kristina W. , Donahue Amy L. , Young Lauren E. , Young Geneva , Fichtenholtz Alex , Ross Jeffrey S. , Yelensky Roman , Stephens Philip J. , Miller Vincent A. , Levine Ross 
Published: May 2015

Background: Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is rapidly becoming an indispensable cancer diagnostic, as it can detect most genomic alterations in a single assay from limited tissue. We developed a novel, NGS-based assay designed to provide targeted assessment of the genomic landscape of hematologic malignancies from archived FFPE, blood and bone marrow aspirate samples, sequencing both DNA and RNA to improve sensitivity for driver fusion events which are common in these tumors.

Methods: The high accuracy of the assay for detection of substitutions, indels and CNAs was previously demonstrated by extensive validation studies achieving 95-99% across all alteration types with high specificity (PPV&gt;99%) [Frampton et al, Nat Biotech, 2013]. To validate assay performance in detecting gene fusions we created reference samples by mixing 21 cell-lines with previously characterized fusions in 39 combinations representing 167 fusion events in 10-50% tumor cell fractions. In addition, we confirmed accuracy in 76 clinical hematologic FFPE and bone-marrow samples profiled for 212 substitutions, indels and fusions in 11 genes by Sanger sequencing, PCR, fragment sizing and FISH. DNA and RNA were extracted from all samples; adaptor ligated sequencing libraries were captured by solution hybridization using custom baits targeting 405 cancer related genes by DNA-seq, and 265 frequently rearranged genes by RNA-seq. All captured libraries were sequenced to high depth (Illumina HiSeq) in a CLIA-certified laboratory (Foundation Medicine), averaging 467x for DNA and 6M unique pairs for RNA.

Results: On reference samples, sensitivity for detection of fusions events reached &gt;99% for tumor cell fractions of 20-50%, and 97% for tumor fraction of 10%, all with high specificity (PPV&gt;95%). Robust performance translated to the clinical samples: we observed a concordance rate of 98.6% relative to prior calls, with only 3/212 differing calls (2+, 1-) by NGS. 129 additional known oncogenic alterations in 57 different genes were detected in these samples, for a total of 3.1 alterations per sample. Analysis of 290 additional leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma patient samples revealed known and novel gene fusions in 15% of cases, more than half of which were identifiable only by RNA-seq.

Conclusions: We describe the analytic validation of a sensitive, high throughput assay to detect somatic alterations in hundreds of genes known to be deregulated in hematologic malignancies, which can be used to identify a spectrum of somatic alterations from blood, bone marrow and paraffin embedded patient samples. We demonstrate that targeted DNA and RNA sequencing can be used to identify all classes of genomic alterations, including gene fusions, with high accuracy. This approach offers the opportunity to streamline the characterization of genomic alterations in hematologic malignancies and to expand targeted treatment options for patients with liquid tumors.

Citation Format: Doron Lipson, Michelle K. Nahas, Geoff A. Otto, Jie He, Kai Wang, Kristina M. Knapp, Kristina W. Brennan, Amy L. Donahue, Lauren E. Young, Geneva Young, Alex Fichtenholtz, Jeffrey S. Ross, Roman Yelensky, Philip J. Stephens, Vincent A. Miller, Ross Levine. Development and validation of a clinical next generation sequencing-based assay for hematologic malignancies. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 3570. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-3570