Abstract 1375: An ultra-sensitive cell free DNA liquid biopsy assay for cancer treatment monitoring

In order to take advantage of the narrow time window for optimal treatment efficacy, highly sensitive disease monitoring is critical in the successful management of cancer. Currently, treatment efficacy is assessed by using a combination of protein cancer biomarkers and imaging. However, both methods present limitations with regard to specificity or sensitivity due to their dependency on tumor size. Recently, a number of studies have suggested that monitoring cell free DNA (cfDNA) may provide a more specific alternative for tracking cancer treatment with greatly improved sensitivity. Here we introduce a novel next-generation sequencing based mutation detection system aimed at improving the sensitivity, reliability, and clinical utility of cancer treatment monitoring. Our system, comprised of Nebula, a whole genome amplification technology that is capable of amplifying nanogram quantities of cfDNA >1000-fold, and Firefly, a proprietary technology combining molecular biology and computational algorithm for error-suppression, has reduced the rate of random sequencing errors to 10-6. As a result, we are able to detect 1.5 variant copies from 10ng of input cfDNA with a detection rate of 46%. We have validated the Nebula-Firefly assay on a patient cohort with either colorectal (CRC) or lung cancer. Here we report the successful detection of drug resistant mutations and various genomic alterations associated with minimal residual detection (MRD) in sample cfDNA. These initial findings have led to the exploration of Nebula-Firefly as the technological backbone for a noninvasive, scalable approach for the early detection, treatment, and monitoring of cancer. Citation Format: Grace Zhao, Li Weng, Paul Tang, Johnny Sun, Yi Huang, Lingchen Guo, Hongyan Wang, Xiaozheng Kang, Wei Shen, Kang Ying, Shengrong Lin. An ultra-sensitive cell free DNA liquid biopsy assay for cancer treatment monitoring. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr 1375.