Prevalence of inferred clonal hematopoiesis (CH) detected on comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) of solid tumor tissue or circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA).

Abstract

3009 Background: The increased use of ctDNA CGP has paralleled increased detection and interest in CH, which can confound CGP results from ctDNA or tissue, and can be associated with hematologic and cardiovascular morbidity. However, paired-depth sequencing of white blood cells (WBC) for confirmation of CH is not widely available. We here study the prevalence of inferred CH (iCH), which refers to incidental detection on routine clinical CGP of variants attributable to CH due to their known CH association and their negligible prevalence in solid tumors. Methods: A database of clinical CGP results was reviewed, including two 324-gene NGS panels for tumor tissue (FoundationOne CDx) and plasma ctDNA (FoundationOne Liquid CDx). Analysis was limited to NSCLC, breast, prostate, colorectal, and pancreatic cancers. iCH was defined as any pathogenic mutation in ASXL1, DNMT3A, and TET2, and prespecified mutations in JAK2, SF3B1, U2AF1, MYD88, IDH2, MPL, CBL. Variant allelic frequency (VAF) > 2% was considered clinically significant and VAF > 10% was considered high risk. Results: 100,905 total cases were studied; median age was 65 for tissue CGP and 68 for ctDNA. iCH was more commonly detected in ctDNA (1468/2891, 51%) than in tissue (9416/97993, 10%). Among cases with any iCH detected, multiple iCH mutations were seen more commonly in ctDNA (640/2891, 22%) than in tissue (987/98014, 1%). Focusing on clinically significant iCH ( > 2% VAF), prevalence remained higher in ctDNA (22%, 637) than in tissue (8%, 7878), while the higher sensitivity of ctDNA testing identified more low level iCH (< 2% VAF, 40% in ctDNA, 2% in tissue). Across cancer types, iCH > 2% was consistently more common in ctDNA (Table). As expected, prevalence of iCH > 2% increased with age (continuous variable, p < 0.001). High risk iCH ( > 10% VAF) was seen in 4% of total cases (most commonly ASXL1, TET2, DNMT3A); 1% of all cases had multiple clinically significant iCH variants ( > 2% VAF). Focusing on a subset of 439 cases with both tissue and ctDNA results (median 1.5 months between samples), 290 iCH mutations were detected in ctDNA (median VAF 1%) but only 38 in tissue (median VAF 9%). Conclusions: Inferred CH is common on somatic CGP of cancer patients, with a high prevalence in ctDNA likely due to the deeper sequencing depth and WBC contamination. For the minority of patients with high VAF iCH, further research is needed to understand whether this might be representative of an occult hematologic condition deserving of further evaluation.[Table: see text]