Abstract 2286: Liquid biopsy for early cancer detection
Authors: Kim Hyunji , Civitci Fehmi , Wagner Josiah , Anur Pavana , Rames Matthew , Nan Xiaolin , Morgan Terry , Ngo Thuy 
Published: August 2019

Introduction: Early cancer detection remains as a critical challenge to improve patient’s survival and clinical outcome. A non-invasive liquid biopsy permits the analysis of multiple circulating biomarkers including cell free nucleic acids and extracellular vesicles that facilitate the discovery of disease. We hypothesize that cancer-derived circulating biomarkers contain heterogeneous surface membrane proteins and/or nucleic acids representing the original tumor, requiring tools which can identify multiple biomarkers to be detected simultaneously. However, challenges including a lack of established isolation standards and determining sufficiently sensitive detection platforms remain for clinical implementation. Our goal is to develop a multiplexed biomarker based assay which can be leveraged to capture the molecular heterogeneity of distinct subpopulations of tumor derived circulating biomarkers.

Materials and Methods: Materials and methods vary greatly by project, each project design will be briefly summarized: 1) Single molecule imaging of ctDNA was conducted using PEG-coated surface whereby biotin streptavidin linked DNA reference strands were exposed to fluorophore conjugated mutant DNA strands for FRET imaging of mutant specific sequences. 2) Extracellular vesicle imaging and profiling was conducted using antibody based surface capture and high-resolution flow cytometry for high throughput exosome characterization. 3) RNA-biomarkers were identified by converting RNA into cDNA using target gene panels selected from data bases at each cycle during a PCR.

Results and Discussion: RNA profiling of initial sample cohort distinguished cancer from healthy, while detecting early cancer patients with high sensitivity. Differentiating genes with biological relevance were identified which can classify pancreatic cancer patients from healthy donor. cfDNA imaging method had nonspecific signal &lt; 0.1-1%, wherein 1-10% mutant fraction can be genotyped. High resolution flow cytometry identified distinct subpopulations of plasma exosomes and revealed their molecular heterogeneity and cancer specific marker candidates can be screened against purified exosomes.

Conclusions: Extracellular vesicle imaging and profiling co-validated by high resolution flow cytometry, exemplifying the utility of a multi-platform detection scheme to characterize plasma-derived extracellular vesicle populations. Cell free RNA biomarkers of cancer by cell-free RNA sequencing were analyzed that can improve early cancer detection outcome, this proof of concept was done on pancreatic patient plasma and is being expanded into other cancer cohorts.

Citation Format: Hyunji Kim, Fehmi Civitci, Josiah Wagner, Pavana Anur, Matthew Rames, Xiaolin Nan, Terry Morgan, Thuy Ngo. Liquid biopsy for early cancer detection [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019; 2019 Mar 29-Apr 3; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 2286.