From Expert Knowledge to Validation Resources: A Case for Using in Silico Approaches to Close the Gap in Available...

Clinical implementation of whole-genome and whole-exome sequencing by next-generation sequencing (NGS) allows for comprehensive detection of genomic alterations. However, with the growing number of clinically relevant genes and variants, there is an urgent need for reference materials to optimize, validate, and quality control NGS tests. This pilot study documents the paucity of physical reference materials for widely tested genes and demonstrates the utility of in silico mutagenized reference materials to supplement physical samples when developing NGS tests. We examined published, expert curated lists of clinically relevant variants for these widely tested genes and found that publicly available reference materials were available for only 29.4%. We outline the steps for generating in silico resources and used 49 curated variants to conduct a blinded proof-of-concept study with three experienced NGS laboratories. One laboratory detected all added variants, and two detected all but one. This study revealed common scenarios that could lead to false-negative results when common pathogenic variants cannot be tested during analytical validation. This work highlights the need to establish centralized knowledge bases for common, pathogenic variants, demonstrates the utility of in silico reference materials, and provides guidance for generating in silico reference materials in-house. Additional work will be needed to generate turnkey processes for novice laboratories without in-house bioinformatics expertise.