Clinical Implications of Circulating Tumor DNA Tumor Mutational Burden (ctDNA TMB) in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Abstract

© AlphaMed Press 2019 Background: Tissue tumor mutational burden (TMB) has emerged as a potential biomarker predicting response to anti-programmed cell death-1 protein receptor (PD-1)/programmed cell death-1 protein ligand (PD-L1) therapy, but few studies have explored using circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) TMB in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Materials and Methods: A total of 136 patients with NSCLC with ctDNA testing were retrospectively evaluated from a single institution, along with a validation cohort from a second institution. ctDNA TMB was derived using the number of detected mutations over the DNA sequencing length. Results: Higher ctDNA TMB was significantly correlated with smoking history (p