Purpose:

Liquid biopsies with circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) analysis are increasingly being utilized as a noninvasive approach to identify actionable genomic alterations in advanced/metastatic cancers. In this study, we report the correlation between ctDNA analysis of plasma samples collected from patients enrolled in the NCI-MATCH trial and tumor tissue–based sequencing.

Experimental Design:

We analyzed plasma samples collected from patients enrolled on 16 subprotocols of NCI-MATCH who had plasma samples collected within 90 days before starting treatment. Concordance was defined as the detection of the same gene alteration leading to patient enrollment in NCI-MATCH in both tissue and plasma.

Results:

We included 300 patients who were enrolled in NCI-MATCH. Most patients (81%, n = 243) were enrolled based on central tissue testing and had contemporaneous tissue and plasma samples. The tissue alteration of interest was detected in the plasma of 81.1% (n = 197) of patients. Lower rates of detection of the tissue alteration of interest were observed in samples from 57 patients who were enrolled based on outside designated laboratory testing (56.1%, n = 32) and had noncontemporaneous tissue and plasma samples. Variations in concordance rates were observed with different alteration types, by maximum plasma variant allele frequency, and based on tumor biopsy site.

Conclusions:

The tumor tissue alteration of interest was detected in the plasma of 81% of patients who were enrolled in the NCI-MATCH trial based on central tissue testing and had contemporaneous tissue and plasma samples. This suggests a potential role for liquid biopsy in patient enrollment in trials evaluating biomarker-driven anticancer therapies.

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