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Cancer Diagnostics |
Departments of1
Haematology and Oncology and 4
Pathology, National University Hospital, Singapore.
2 Oncology Research Institute and 3
Department of Pathology, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
5 School of Surgery and Pathology, University of Western Australia, Western Australia, Perth, Australia.
6 Department of Surgery, Kanazawa University School of Medicine, Kanazawa, Japan.
7 Department of Anatomical Pathology, Pathwest, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
aAddress correspondence to this author at: Oncology Research Institute, National University of Singapore, MD11 Level 5, 10 Medical Dr., Singapore 117597. Fax 65-68739664; e-mail: nmirs{at}nus.edu.sg.
| Abstract |
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Methods: Primers, temperatures, and buffer conditions were optimized for PCR-pDHPLC analysis of EGFR exons 1821. We evaluated the detection limits of pDHPLC and direct sequencing by analyzing mixtures of wild-type and variant EGFR DNA and screened 192 lung cancer samples to examine the diversity of pDHPLC-detectable variants. To assess amenability to routine analysis, we tested lung and pleural tissue specimens from 14 lung cancer patients treated with gefitinib.
Results: The detection limits for variant alleles were 1:100 for pDHPLC and 1:5 for direct sequencing. pDHPLC analysis detected 26 unique EGFR variants, including the common deletions in exon 19 and substitutions in codons 787 and 858. Direct sequencing could not identify 30% (18 of 60) of the variant amplicons identified by pDHPLC. We identified these 18 amplicons by fraction collection after pDHPLC analysis. Analysis of a limited series of lung biopsy samples detected EGFR variants more frequently in gefitinib responders than in nonresponders. pDHPLC analysis was 56% less expensive and 39% faster than direct sequencing.
Conclusions: pDHPLC-based analysis detects EGFR variations in routine clinical samples with a better detection limit and lower cost and time requirement than direct sequencing.
| Introduction |
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The prospect that EGFR variations could identify individuals with a likely improved outcome after EGFR TKI treatment has generated keen interest in assays that detect such variants. After studies of BRCA1 and BRCA2 variants for familial breast cancer, MLH1 and MSH2 variants for hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer, and DPYD variants for predicting toxicity to fluoropyrimidine treatment, partially denaturing HPLC (pDHPLC) has become recognized as an optimal method for detecting diverse variants distributed potentially throughout the genome (11). The technique discriminates between wild-type and variant alleles by their distinctive chromatographic properties at partially denaturing temperatures and pH. Comparative studies have shown pDHPLC to be one of the most sensitive DNA-screening techniques available (12); pDHPLC can detect variants in mixtures with the wild-type allele at ratios as low as 1:100 (13). By screening out the often large proportions of samples with wild-type alleles, pDHPLC also offers significant savings in costs and time compared with direct sequencing. Moreover, available pDHPLC instrumentation features precisely regulated temperature control, liquid handling, sample injection, processing, and analysis.
The ability of pDHPLC to detect a large range of sequence variants with high sensitivity and low detection limits for minority alleles in an inexpensive and standardized manner suggests it as a useful approach for routine detection of EGFR variants. Recently, investigators used a DHPLC instrument and nondenaturing size analysis of DNA digested with a DNA mismatchrecognizing enzyme (SURVEYOR) to detect EGFR variants (14); however, the feasibility of pDHPLC for EGFR variant analysis has not been reported. We undertook this study to optimize a pDHPLC-based assay system for detecting EGFR variants in small biopsy samples of lung tumors and to assess its potential for routine screening.
| Materials and Methods |
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pcr-PDHPLC analysis
PCR was performed with the FastStart Taq DNA Polymerase reagent set (Roche Diagnostics). In brief, 50 ng of DNA was amplified in a 25-µL reaction volume containing 1x PCR buffer, 2 mol/L MgCl2, 400 nmol/L PCR primers, 200 µmol/L deoxynucleoside triphosphates, and 1 U of FastStart Taq polymerase. Thermal cycling conditions were as follows: heating at 95 °C for 4 min; 40 cycles of 95 °C for 30 s, the specific annealing temperature for 30 s, and 72 °C for 1 min; and a final step of 72 °C for 1 min. PCR products were electrophoresed on an agarose gel to ensure that correctly sized amplicons were obtained. The PCR product was then denatured at 95 °C for 4 min and cooled to 25 °C at a rate of 1.2 °C/min to allow formation of heterozygote DNA. PCR product (10 µL) was then loaded for pDHPLC analysis on the WAVE 3500HT High Sensitivity System instrument (Transgenomic) and eluted with a gradient mixture of Buffers A (0.1 mol/L triethylammonium acetate) and B (0.1 mol/L triethylammonium acetate, 250 mL/L acetonitrile), obtained from Transgenomic. The respective forward and reverse PCR primer sequences, PCR annealing temperatures, pDHPLC running temperatures, and buffer B gradients were as follows: TTTCCAGCATGGTGAGGG and ACAGCTTGCAAGGACTCT (exon 18), 60 °C, 61.2 °C, 53.5%62.5%; AGCATGTGGCACCATCTC and AGACATGAGAAAAGGTGG (exon 19), 60 °C, 57.7 oC, 51.9%60.9%; CATGTGCCCCTCCTTCTG and CTATCCCAGGAGCGCAGA (exon 20), 55 °C, 61.7 °C, 55.4%64.4%; and AATTCGGATGCAGAGCTT and TACAGCTAGTGGGAAGGC (exon 21), 60 °C, 61.2 °C, 54.5%63.5%.
sequencing
We purified PCR products for sequencing with the ExoSAP-IT reagent for PCR product clean-up (USB). DNA was sequenced with the BigDye Terminator v3.1 Cycle Sequencing Kit (Applied Biosystems) with the same primers used for the PCR. The 3100 Genetic Analyzer (Applied Biosystems) was used for capillary electrophoresis and sequence analysis. All variants were sequenced bidirectionally.
fraction collection and sequencing
We reloaded the post-pDHPLC PCR product for pDHPLC analysis on the WAVE instrument and collected eluate fractions within times corresponding to those of aberrant peaks on the instrument systems. We precipitated DNA from the eluate with an equal volume of 10 mol/L ammonium acetate and washed the precipitate with 700 mL/L ethanol. The precipitate was resuspended in 20 µL of water; 2 µL was used for PCR and subsequent sequencing.
plasmid preparation
PCR product from samples with wild-type or mutant DNA was cloned into pGEM-T Easy Vectors by means of the pGEM-T Easy reagent set (Promega). After ligation, transformation, and propagation, plasmids were purified with the QIAprep Spin MiniPrep system (Qiagen). Bidirectional sequencing confirmed the identity of plasmid DNA used in the mixing experiments to determine detection limits.
| Results |
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3 h. pDHPLC analysis of each amplicon required
8 min.
comparison of variant detection limits for PDHPLC and sequencing
We compared the detection limits for pDHPLC and direct sequencing by analyzing plasmid samples containing both variant (746B, 15-bp deletion) and wild-type sequences in various proportions from 1:1 to 1:1000. pDHPLC clearly revealed a peak corresponding to the mutant allele above the background signal in the 1:100 sample (Fig. 1
). With direct sequencing, the same deletion variant was reliably apparent only in the 1:5 sample. Similar results were obtained with plasmid mixtures containing 1 variant (858B: T
G) and the wild-type sequence.
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analysis of lung cancer samples from japan, australia, and singapore
Of the 192 samples, 150, 7, 18, 12, and 5 samples provided pDHPLC-readable results for 4, 3, 2, 1, and 0, respectively, of the 4 analyzed amplicons. The 42 samples (22%) with at least 1 amplicon unavailable for analysis were excluded from further consideration. Of the remaining cases, 10% (60 of 600) of the amplicons from 33% (50 of 150) of the cases exhibited pDHPLC chromatograms that differed from those of known wild-type samples (Fig. 2
). Forty-one cases, 8 cases, and 1 case displayed aberrant chromatograms for 1, 2, and 3 amplicons, respectively.
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DNA sequencing identified 70% (42 of 60) of the variant amplicons identified by pDHPLC and 70% (35 of 50) of the cases with aberrant pDHPLC chromatograms, corresponding to 23% (35 of 150) of the eligible cases overall (Table 1
). Two variants were concurrently identified in 3 amplicons. We sequenced 40 amplicons determined to be wild-type by pDHPLC (10 for each exon), and all showed the wild-type sequence.
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To identify the variants in the 18 amplicons that were not identifiable by direct sequencing, we developed a fraction-collection protocol for sequencing enriched variants (Fig. 3
). We identified sequence variants in all 18 amplicons, including 7 different variant types (Table 1
). We sequenced fraction-collected samples from wild-type pDHPLC peaks for 8 amplicons (2 for each exon) and obtained only wild-type sequences.
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Twenty-three different variants were identified, in-cluding deletions in exon 19 (25 of 63; 40%) and single-base changes in codons 719 (7 of 63; 11%), 787 (15 of 63; 24%), and 858 (5 of 63; 8%).
analysis of small biopsy samples from lung cancer patients treated with gefitinib
To investigate whether pDHPLC is suitable for routine clinical samples, we used pDHPLC to analyze DNA extracted from small biopsy samples from 14 lung cancer patients treated with gefitinib (Table 2
). We analyzed all of these samples by both pDHPLC and direct sequencing. With both methods, 71% of the samples (10 of 14) gave results suitable for analysis, and 80% (8 of 10) contained a variant. Complete concordance between the 2 techniques was observed for the amplicons identified as having DNA variants. Three additional unique variants were detected in this series: 734B: A
G (Glu
Gly); a silent 759C: C
A (Ile
Ile) substitution; and an intronic substitution (IVS19+53: C
A) (the letters A, B, and C after the codon number indicate the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd nucleotide positions of the codon, respectively). Not considering silent and intronic variants, we observed a higher frequency of EGFR variants in responders (4 of 5; 80%) than in nonresponders (2 of 5; 40%). This result is consistent with previous reports; however, the small numbers of cases in this series make it difficult to extrapolate the observed variant incidences to those of responders vs nonresponders in general.
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cost and time of variant screening
We compared the pDHPLC-based system and direct sequencing with respect to the costs and time required for EGFR variant screening. The cost per sample unit for the 2 methods was based on reagent costs in Singapore and on optimal throughput analysis with 4 x 96-well plates. This system allows the analysis of 4 amplicons (1 per exon) from 94 test samples, 1 wild-type sample, and 1 negative-control sample. Processing times for the respective workflows were also estimated. The calculations showed that pDHPLC provided 56% cost savings and 39% time savings compared with direct sequencing (Fig. 4
). The major savings with the pDHPLC method derived from eliminating the need to sequence large numbers of wild-type alleles.
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| Discussion |
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Our results suggest that pDHPLC analysis may be a useful approach for detecting EGFR variants in clinical tissue samples, with a number of potential advantages over current methods. pDHPLC detected variants in mutantwild-type mixtures of 1:100, compared with 1:5 by direct sequencing (Fig. 1
). Reports have described detection limits of 1:100 for SURVEYOR mismatch enzyme analysis (14) and 1:10 for both fragment length polymorphism/capillary electrophoresis (24) and TaqMan-based allele-specific assays (25), but no report has described detection limits for assays based on single-strand conformation variation (20) and melting curves (26). Our results indicate that pDHPLC has a capacity for detecting EGFR variants that is equivalent to or better than other currently available methods.
Our detection of 26 unique EGFR variants in 164 lung cancer samples (Tables 1
and 2
) demonstrates the ability of pDHPLC to detect a variety of EGFR variants. We detected all the frequent EGFR variantsvariations at codons 719, 787, and 858 and deletions in exon 19. In contrast, Marchetti et al. (20) detected only 8 unique variants in exons 18, 19, and 21 in 860 lung cancer samples in a study based on single-strand conformation variation, and in the largest direct-sequencing series to date, Shigematsu et al. identified only 28 unique variants in 1136 lung cancer samples (27).
The ability of pDHPLC to detect such diverse EGFR variants from just 4 amplicons has advantages over many allele-specific methods, such as melting curve (26), restriction fragment length polymorphism (24), and TaqMan(25) analyses. Only 58% of the variants detected in the current study comprised the single-nucleotide variants at codons 719 and 858 and deletions in exon 19 that such methods commonly detect. To detect the same number of EGFR variants as with our approach, allele-specific methods would require large numbers of expensive primers, probes, and reactions and would consume large amounts of often scarce sample material. Methods based on real-time PCR analysis may be more rapid than pDHPLC and may become the method of choice for small numbers of samples and the short turnaround times needed for routine analysis. Our knowledge of the functional significance of most EGFR variants is limited, however, and the benefits from faster analysis are unlikely to compensate for the risk of false negatives arising from limited variant screening. That we detected the 734B: A
G variant in a patient responding to gefitinib that current allele-specific methods would not have identified emphasizes this point (Table 2
).
The amenability of pDHPLC analysis to fraction collection allowed identification of variants beyond the detection limit of direct sequencing (Fig. 3
). The frequency of such amplicons was 29% (18 of 63) in our study. Marchetti et al. (20) and Pan et al. (24) identified additional variants by single-strand conformation variation (5 of 39; 13%) and restriction fragment length polymorphism (4 of 29; 14%) methods that direct sequencing did not detect. By enriching for tumor content with laser microdissection, Takano et al. (5) found variants in an additional 26% of samples (11 of 43) that direct sequencing did not detect in nonenriched samples. The high frequency of these cases (13%29%) and the possibility that the variants identified in these cases could explain responses to EGFR TKIs in the apparent absence of EGFR variants identifiable by direct sequencing highlight the importance of the superior detection limit of pDHPLC and its amenability to fraction collection. That these fraction-collection capabilities could also decrease the need for time-consuming and labor-intensive microdissection is another benefit.
Recently, Janne et al. (14) reported a similar fraction-collection procedure; however, the workflow comprised DNA digestion by SURVEYOR enzymes, nondenaturing size analysis on the DHPLC instrument, repeat PCR analysis of variant amplicons, pDHPLC determination of aberrant peak retention times, reinjection of the PCR product, and then fraction collection. By requiring only the last 3 steps, our method decreases sample and time requirements.
pDHPLC analysis is 56% less expensive and 39% faster than direct sequencing (Fig. 4
). These differences could make pDHPLC feasible for many laboratories and health maintenance systems.
Our finding of the wild-type sequence only in 40 randomly selected amplicons from lung cancer samples previously determined by pDHPLC to lack variants demonstrates this methods specificity. Furthermore, we found no sequence variants in 8 fraction-collected amplicons and 31 amplicons from gefitinib-treated patients that pDHPLC determined to be wild-type. We could have further investigated sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values by comparing pDHPLC and direct sequencing with respect to the detection frequencies of EGFR variants for the entire series of clinical samples; however, limitations in finances and sample availability precluded such an investigation.
Finally, the detection of a higher frequency of EGFR variants in small biopsy samples from responders to gefitinib treatment than in samples from nonresponders (Table 2
) indicates that pDHPLC can provide clinically relevant results from clinically relevant samples. This achievement is important because until very recently (28), EGFR variant analyses had been performed only on relatively large, surgically resected samples. Resection samples, however, are primarily obtained only from early-stage lung cancers, whereas EGFR TKI therapies are currently indicated for late-stage refractory disease. Hence, the demonstration that small biopsy specimens are amenable to EGFR variant analysis should significantly enhance the clinical value of the pDHPLC assay.
In summary, the present results indicate that pDHPLC can be an inexpensive and fast system, with a good detection limit for detecting EGFR variants in clinical tissue samples. The assay has a number of advantages over current methods that make it amenable to routine EGFR variant analysis. The benefits from pDHPLC, however, are contingent on being able to meet the high start-up costs and the availability of the necessary expertise. Nevertheless, in situations with large numbers of samples, the decreases in costs and time and the superior detection limit of pDHPLC should eventually compensate for the initial outlay. The next challenge may well be the interpretation of results. pDHPLC detected a number of intronic and silent sequence variants in the present study. Moreover, some novel variants were detected in gefitinib responders, whereas exon 19 deletions and the Leu858Arg variant were detected in nonresponders to this treatment. The latter findings have also been reported for other studies (3)(4). These novel variants may represent either novel functional changes or sequencing artifacts; thus, these results call for additional in vivo and in vitro studies to improve our understanding of the functional significance of individual EGFR variants. Our results suggest that pDHPLC can be an efficient assay to facilitate such investigations.
| Acknowledgments |
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| Footnotes |
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2 Human genes: EGFR, epidermal growth factor receptor [erythroblastic leukemia viral (v-erb-b) oncogene homolog, avian]; BRCA1, breast cancer 1, early onset; BRCA2, breast cancer 2, early onset; MLH1, mutL homolog 1, colon cancer, nonpolyposis type 2 (Escherichia coli); MSH2, mutS homolog 2, colon cancer, nonpolyposis type 1 (E. coli); DPYD, dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase; KRAS, v-Ki-ras2 Kirsten rat sarcoma viral oncogene homolog. ![]()
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