On May 31, 2022 Lucence, the precision oncology company pioneering ultrasensitive liquid biopsy tests using circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) and circulating tumor RNA (ctRNA), reported that it will present promising new data on the extension of its amplicon-based next generation sequencing (NGS) assays to new applications at the 58th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) (Free ASCO Whitepaper) in-person in Chicago, from June 3rd to June 7th, 2022 (Press release, Lucence, MAY 31, 2022, View Source [SID1234615288]).

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"Lucence strives to provide clinicians with the most clinically actionable information to impact patient care using liquid biopsy. The data we are presenting at 2022 ASCO (Free ASCO Whitepaper) shows how a total nucleic acid approach combining ctDNA and ctRNA in one liquid biopsy assay could dramatically increase actionable molecular information in lung cancer patients," said Min-Han Tan, PhD, MBBS, Founding CEO of Lucence.

In an abstract to be presented (#3040) as part of the conference poster sessions, Lucence CTO Yukti Choudhury and collaborators examined combining an amplicon-based NGS ctRNA assay with a ctDNA assay for enhanced detection of clinically actionable gene fusions in lung cancer when compared with ctDNA alone. In plasma samples from non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients that were either baseline driver-negative (by ctDNA) or treated with tyrosine kinase-inhibitors, the combined assay found 8.7% (9/103) more actionable fusions than ctDNA alone. Together ctRNA and ctDNA resulted in detection of 30 fusions compared to 21 when only ctDNA was tested, representing a 42.8% (9/21) increase in fusion-specific detection of the combined assay; additional fusions detected included BRAF, MET and NRG1 fusions. The data support combining ctRNA with ctDNA in liquid biopsy to increase the total actionable diagnostic information in NSCLC patients where tissue samples are lacking, especially for gene fusions not amenable to detection in ctDNA.

Lucence Research Scientist Jonathan Poh and collaborators will present data (#3042) showing that ctDNA can be utilized to non-invasively assess loss of heterozygosity (LOH) in multiple cancer types. LOH is a key biomarker to identify homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) status and predict response to PARP inhibitors. Using this approach, Poh et al. showed concordance of HRD status with an orthogonal test at 91.3%. Even in the absence of pathogenic HR gene alterations, LOH detection in ctDNA provided additional diagnostic yield of HRD+ status in multiple cancer types.

In another abstract authored by Choudhury and collaborators (#3041), analysis showed that it was possible to derive meaningful ctDNA fragment size information from a multiplexed amplicon-based assay. Several groups have shown analyzing ctDNA fragment size and ratios might be used to identify and characterize early stage cancers. Choudhury hopes to extend these so-called "fragmentomics" signatures to LiquidHALLMARK.

Lucence will be exhibiting at booth 16112 at the ASCO (Free ASCO Whitepaper) Annual Meeting. For the latest information on Lucence at 2022 ASCO (Free ASCO Whitepaper), please visit View Source

Poster Presentation Details

Yukti Choudhury, et al. A cell-free RNA-based next-generation sequencing (NGS) assay for the detection of actionable gene fusions in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients
Poster Session: Sunday, June 5th from 8am-11am CDT

Jonathan Poh, et al. Detection of homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) in cell-free DNA (cfDNA) using an amplicon-based next-generation sequencing (NGS) assay
Poster Session: Sunday, June 5th from 8am-11am CDT

Yukti Choudhury, et al. Early detection of cancer using cell-free DNA (cfDNA) size analysis on a multiplexed amplicon-based next-generation sequencing (NGS) platform
Poster Session: Sunday, June 5th from 8am-11am CDT