Discovery of Targetable Genetic Alterations in NSCLC Patients with Different Metastatic Patterns Using a MassARRAY-Based Circulating Tumor DNA Assay

Belloum, Yassine; Janning, Melanie; Mohme, Malte; Simon, Ronald; Kropidlowski, Jolanthe; Sartori, Alexander; Irwin, Darryl; Westphal, Manfred; Lamszus, Katrin; Loges, Sonja; Riethdorf, Sabine; Pantel, Klaus; Wikman, Harriet

Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) has shown great promise as a minimally invasive liquid biopsy for personalized cancer diagnostics especially among metastatic patients. Here, we used a novel sensitive assay to detect clinically relevant mutations in ctDNA in blood plasma from metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients, including patients with a limited oligo–brain metastatic disease. We analyzed 66 plasma samples from 56 metastatic NSCLC patients for 74 hotspot mutations in five genes commonly mutated in NSCLC using a novel MassARRAY-based lung cancer panel with a turnaround time of only 3 days. Mutations in plasma DNA could be detected in 28 out of 56 patients (50.0%), with a variant allele frequency (VAF) ranging between 0.1% and 5.0%. Mutations were detected in 50.0% of patients with oligo–brain metastatic disease, although the median VAF was lower (0.4%) compared to multi-brain metastatic patients (0.9%) and patients with extra-cranial metastatic progression (1.2%). We observed an overall concordance of 86.4% (n = 38/44) for EGFR status between plasma and tissue. The MassARRAY technology can detect clinically relevant mutations in plasma DNA from metastatic NSCLC patients including patients with limited, oligo–brain metastatic disease.