Bridging the Diagnostic Gap in Hereditary Cancers with Simple, Cost-Effective, High-Throughput RNA Splicing Analysis

Diagnostic analysis of mRNA is essential because altered splicing is a frequent cause of genetic diseases. High-throughput splicing studies remain difficult to implement in routine diagnostics. This is why SEALigHTS (splice and expression analyses by ligation and high throughput sequencing), a cost-effective and easy-to-implement technique designed for simultaneous analysis of RNA from multiple patients on a panel of genes, was developed using probes designed at exon extremities. After reverse transcription and probing on cDNA, neighboring probes are ligated and the number of ligations quantified by using unique molecular identifiers and sequencing. A panel covering 42 genes (ie, 2195 probes) involved in breast/ovarian and colorectal cancer predispositions was designed. After a training phase on 40 samples, SEALigHTS was validated in another laboratory on 56 samples carrying various splicing variations previously characterized by RNA sequencing, with a sensitivity of 96% and specificity of 94%. Subsequently, in a series of 37 selected patients and 114 consecutive patients from the genetics clinic with a concomitant DNA panel, five new diagnoses were made, revealing the impact on splicing of a cryptic genomic variant (deep intronic, retrotransposon insertion), and the unexpected impact on splicing of six genomic variations was unmasked. Beyond increased diagnostic yield and classification of variants of uncertain significance, this comprehensive DNA and RNA combined approach highlights unexpected splicing defects and addresses genotype-phenotype correlation issues.