Impact and Diagnostic Gaps of Comprehensive Genomic Profiling in Real-World Clinical Practice

next-generation sequencing based comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) is becoming common practice. Although numerous studies have shown its feasibility to identify actionable genomic alterations in most patients, its clinical impact as part of routine management across all cancers in the community remains unknown.

we conducted a retrospective study of all patients that underwent CGP as part of routine cancer management from January 2013 to June 2017 at an academic community-based NCI-designated cancer center. CGP was done in addition to established first tier reflex molecular testing as per national guidelines (e.g., EGFR/ALK for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and extended-RAS for colorectal cancer).

349 tests were sent for CGP from 333 patients and 95% had at least one actionable genomic alteration reported. According to the reported results, 23.2% had a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved therapy available, 61.3% had an off-label therapy available and 77.9% were potentially eligible for a clinical trial. Treatment recommendations were also reviewed within the OncoKB database and 47% of them were not clinically validated therapies. The CGP results led to treatment change in only 35 patients (10%), most commonly in NSCLC. Nineteen of these patients (54% of those treated and 5% of total) had documented clinical benefit with targeted therapy.

we demonstrate that routine use of CGP in the community across all cancer types detects potentially actionable genomic alterations in a majority of patients, however has modest clinical impact enriched in the NSCLC subset.