Development and clinical validation of discriminatory multi-target digital droplet PCR assays for the detection of hot spot KRAS and NRAS mutations in cell-free DNA

Detection and quantification of tumor-derived KRAS and NRAS mutations in cell-free plasma DNA (cfDNA) holds great potential for cancer diagnostics and treatment response monitoring. Because of high sensitivity, specificity, robustness and affordability, digital droplet PCR (ddPCR) is ideally suited for this application but requires discriminatory multiplexing when used as screening assay. We therefore designed, optimized and clinically validated mutation-specific locked nucleic acid (LNA)-based ddPCR assays for 14 commonly occurring KRAS and NRAS mutations and assembled these assays into 7 discriminatory multi-target screening assays covering 2-6 SNVs each.

Source: Journal of Molecular Diagnostics - May 2, 2020 Category: Pathology Authors: Saskia Hussung, Marie Follo, Rhena F.U. Klar, Sandra Michalczyk, Kornelia Fritsch, Friederike Nollmann, Julian Hipp, Justus Duyster, Florian Scherer, Nikolas von Bubnoff, Melanie Boerries, Uwe Wittel, Ralph M. Fritsch Tags: Regular Article Source Type: research