Clinical Utility of Large Next-Generation Sequencing Panel Across Diverse Tumour Types: A Single-Center Retrospective...

In complex real-world clinical practice, the application of advanced technologies, such as next-generation sequencing (NGS), is crucial for achieving the most reasonable and relatively effective therapy for cancer patients at each stage of treatment.

This study aimed to retrospectively analyze the clinical utility of a large NGS panel in the management of solid tumors within a clinical practice setting.

A comprehensive NGS panel was used to detect diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic biomarkers in solid tumors on a commercially available platform. NGS assay was performed on 431 specimens from 416 patients.

At least 1 actionable variant was in 89.1% of all specimens. The most frequently altered gene was TP53, followed by EGFR, KRAS, PIKC3A, and RB1. In 55.7% of cases, at least 1 therapeutically targetable variant was identified, including 25.3% of cases harboring variants for which a targeted therapy was available for the disease and 26.0% of cases harboring variants for which a targeted therapy was available for other diseases. The median tumor mutational burden (TMB) was 10.3 mutations/Mb. Microsatellite instability (MSI) was available for 352 patients, and only 6 cases were MSI-high. The patients receiving targeted therapy and/or immune checkpoint inhibitors survived significantly longer than those receiving chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy (P = 0.001).

Our results demonstrate the significant clinical utility of comprehensive genomic profiling in the routine clinical testing of patients with solid tumors.