Sensitive and affordable diagnostic assay for the quantitative detection of anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) alterations in patients with non-small cell lung cancer.

Sensitive and affordable diagnostic assay for the quantitative detection of anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) alterations in patients with non-small cell lung cancer.

Oncotarget. 2016 May 19;

Authors: Dama E, Tillhon M, Bertalot G, de Santis F, Troglio F, Pessina S, Passaro A, Pece S, de Marinis F, Dell'Orto P, Viale G, Spaggiari L, Di Fiore PP, Bianchi F, Barberis M, Vecchi M

Abstract
Accurate detection of altered anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) expression is critical for the selection of lung cancer patients eligible for ALK-targeted therapies. To overcome intrinsic limitations and discrepancies of currently available companion diagnostics for ALK, we developed a simple, affordable and objective PCR-based predictive model for the quantitative measurement of any ALK fusion as well as wild-type ALK upregulation. This method, optimized for low-quantity/-quality RNA from FFPE samples, combines cDNA pre-amplification with ad hoc generated calibration curves. All the models we derived yielded concordant predictions when applied to a cohort of 51 lung tumors, and correctly identified all 17 ALK FISH-positive and 33 of the 34 ALK FISH-negative samples. The one discrepant case was confirmed as positive by IHC, thus raising the accuracy of our test to 100%. Importantly, our method was accurate when using low amounts of input RNA (10 ng), also in FFPE samples with limited tumor cellularity (5-10%) and in FFPE cytology specimens. Thus, our test is an easily implementable diagnostic tool for the rapid, efficacious and cost-effective screening of ALK status in patients with lung cancer.

PMID: 27206799 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

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