Radiotherapy Increases Plasma Levels of Tumoral Cell-free DNA in Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Patients

Overview

Journal Oncotarget

Specialty Oncology

Date 2018 May 4

PMID 29721209

Citations 18

Authors

Shun-Ichiro Kageyama

Keiji Nihei

Katsuyuki Karasawa

Takeshi Sawada

Fumiaki Koizumi

Shigeo Yamaguchi

Shunsuke Kato

Hidehiro Hojo

Atsuhi Motegi

Katsuya Tsuchihara

Tetsuo Akimoto

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

We investigated the plasma levels of tumor-specific cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in 17 stage I-II (early) and IV (advanced) non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients who underwent radiotherapy. Digital polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and targeted sequencing showed that total and tumor-specific cfDNA levels increased in response to radiotherapy in both early- and advanced-stage NSCLC patients. We detected high copy numbers of epidermal growth factor receptor mutations (L858R and T790M) in the cfDNA samples from stage IV NSCLC patients who underwent stereotactic body radiation therapy to treat brain metastasis related to tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) treatment failure. In conclusion, our study demonstrates that radiotherapy increases tumoral cfDNA levels in the plasma and shows potential to serve as an indicator for diagnosing drug-resistant tumor-related gene mutations in early-stage NSCLC patients or those undergoing molecular targeted therapy.

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