Quantification of Somatic Chromosomal Rearrangements in Circulating Cell-Free DNA from (serous) Ovarian Cancers

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July 20, 2016
 

Table 1: Patients’ clinical characteristics.

From: Quantification of Somatic Chromosomal Rearrangements in Circulating Cell-Free DNA from Ovarian Cancers

 For eight out of the ten patients tested, junctions identified in DNA of the primary tumor were also detected in the cfDNA derived from pre-surgical plasma (Table 1). Of these eight, three demonstrated a continued presence of the ctDNA post-surgery, consistent with the presence of disease, which was documented at the time of the blood draw. In five patients, ctDNA could not be detected post-surgery, in accord with the lack of detectable disease observed at the time of the blood draw. Thus, for these eight cases, perfect concordance was observed between ctDNA detection and clinical presentation at the time of the blood draw. In two of the ten cases, somatic rearrangements could not be detected in the patient plasma.

  Recently, ctDNA increases in breast cancer were found to indicate recurrence earlier than rises in CTCs or CA 15-3. Furthermore, detection of ctDNA in half of these cases was possible an average of 5 months before radiologically confirmed disease progression was observed^3,25. Similar results have been reported in gynecological cancer¹⁸. More work will need to be done in OC patients to study how fluctuations in ctDNA% correlate with other clinical indicators of recurrence over multiple time-points.