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Background: The non-invasive identification of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations is important for the institution of individualized therapy of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In this study, the feasibility of screening for EGFR exon 19 E746_A750del mutations in circulating DNA from plasma was assessed.
Methods: Mutant-specific primers with a Taqman probe (MST-PCR) were designed. The ability of this method to accurately detect decreasing concentrations of E746_A750del mutant within a wild type DNA background that mimics the situation of a plasma sample from patients with acquired mutations is verified. To verify the clinical applicability of this method, 55 plasma samples from NSCLC patients were tested, and the sensitivity of MSTPCR was compared to that of direct sequencing.
Results: The results showed that MST-PCR could detect 10 to 50 copies/μL of E746_A750del, representing 0.1% of the wild type EGFR allelic population. Among the 55 cases of NSCLC, 10 cases of E746_A750del were detected by MST-PCR, while only 1 case was revealed by direct sequencing.
Conclusions: These findings demonstrate that MST-PCR provides superior sensitivity for the detection of the E746_A750del mutation, suggesting its potential application in the noninvasive detection of E746_A750del mutations in plasma samples from NSCLC patients.
DOI: 10.7754/Clin.Lab.2014.140106
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