Clinical Application of Next-Generation Sequencing of Plasma Cell-Free DNA for Genotyping Untreated Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Background: Analysis of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) has remarkable potential as a non-invasive lung cancer molecular diagnostic method. This prospective study addressed the clinical value of a targeted-gene amplicon-based plasma next-generation sequencing (NGS) assay to detect actionable mutations in ctDNA in patients with newly diagnosed advanced lung adenocarcinoma. Methods: ctDNA test performance and concordance with tissue NGS were determined, and the correlation between ctDNA findings, clinical features, and clinical outcomes was evaluated in 115 patients with paired plasma and tissue samples. Results: Targeted-gene NGS-based ctDNA and NGS-based tissue analysis detected 54 and 63 genomic alterations, respectively
11 patients presented co-mutations, totalizing 66 hotspot mutations detected, 51 on both tissue and plasma, 12 exclusively on tissue, and 3 exclusively on plasma. NGS-based ctDNA revealed a diagnostic performance with 81.0% sensitivity, 95.3% specificity, 94.4% PPV, 83.6% NPV, test accuracy of 88.2%, and Cohen’s Kappa 0.764. PFS and OS assessed by both assays did not significantly differ. Detection of ctDNA alterations was statistically associated with metastatic disease (p = 0.013), extra-thoracic metastasis (p = 0.004) and the number of organs involved (p = 0.010). Conclusions: This study highlights the potential use of ctDNA for mutation detection in newly diagnosed NSCLC patients due to its high accuracy and correlation with clinical outcomes.