Clinical utility of plasma-based digital next-generation sequencing in patients with advance-stage lung adenocarcinomas with insufficient tumor samples for tissue genotyping.

BACKGROUND: Approximately 30% of tumor biopsies from patients with advanced-stage lung adenocarcinomas yield insufficient tissue for successful molecular subtyping. We have analyzed the clinical utility of next-generation sequencing (NGS) of cell-free circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in patients with inadequate tumor samples for tissue genotyping. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We conducted the study in a multi-institutional prospective cohort of clinically unselected patients with advanced-stage lung adenocarcinomas with insufficient tissue for EGFR, ALK or ROS1 genotyping across 12 Spanish institutions (n = 93). ctDNA NGS was carried out by Guardant Health (Guardant360, Redwood City, CA), using a hybrid-capture-based 73-gene panel. Variants were deemed actionable if they were part of the OncoKB precision oncology knowledge database and classified in four levels of actionability based on their clinical or preclinical evidence for drug response. RESULTS: Eighty-three out of 93 patients (89%) had detectable levels of ctDNA. Potentially actionable level 1-4 genomic alterations were detected in 53 cases (57%), of which 13 (14%) had level 1-2A alterations (Food and Drug Administration-approved and standard-care biomarkers according to lung cancer guidelines). Frequencies of each genomic alteration in ctDNA were consistent with those observed in unselected pulmonary adenocarcinomas. The majority of the patients (62%), particularly those with actionable alterations (87%), had more than one pathogenic variant in ctDNA. The median turnaround time to genomic results was 13 days. Twelve patients (13%) received genotype-matched therapies based on ctDNA results, deriving the expected clinical benefit. Patients with co-occurring pathogenic alterations had a significantly shorter median overall survival as compared with patients without co-occurring pathogenic alteration (multivariate hazard ratio = 5.35, P = 0.01). CONCLUSION: Digital NGS of ctDNA in lung cancers with insufficient tumor samples for tissue sequencing detects actionable variants that frequently co-occur with other potentially clinically relevant genomic alterations, allowing timely initiation of genotype-matched therapies.

A theoretical comparison of 2-camera and 3-camera optical localizers with active or passive instrumentation.

Since the technology was first pioneered in the medical arena in the early 1990s, optical localizers have increasingly been used in computer assisted surgical procedures. This surgical practice is commonly referred to as "Image Guided Surgery (IGS)". Historically, mechanical stereotactical frames have been used for 3-D position measurement in surgery. Now, new computer input devices can generate high speed numeric position data for direct input into a host computer. This enables application software to acquire the real-time position of surgical instruments and display the positions relative to previously acquired Computer Tomography (CT) or Magnetic Resonance (MR) images on the same computer screen. In addition to optical, there are currently three other types of technologies utilized in the design of these localizers--mechanical, magnetic and sonic. Of these four technologies, optical has emerged as the leader due to its superior accuracy, ease of use, and unobtrusive design. This document focuses on optical localizer technology, specifically comparing 2-camera, or 2-sensor, systems with 3-camera, or 3-sensor, systems. Figures 1 and 2 show applications of such IGS workstations in cranial surgery.