Patients and samples
Samples were recruited from four different centers [Hospital Universitario Virgen del Rocío de Sevilla, Spain (HUVR), Universitair Ziekenhuis Leuven, Belgium (UZL), Complejo Hospitalario de Jaén, Spain (CHJ) and Hospital Universitario de Bellvitge, Spain (HUB)]. The CPE study was carried out at two sites: UZL and HUVR (reference lab due to accreditation under the UNE-EN ISO 15189:2013 related with this technique). The initial study cohort consisted of 290 samples (42 from UZL and 248 from HUVR). 179 samples, out of the 290 initially selected and enrolled samples, met the inclusion criteria (table 1). Samples used for this study were slides or curls (slices) from archived, appropriately stored and adequately identified FFPE tumor blocks obtained via routine practice.
Table 1: inclusion criteria for samples.
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Inclusion criteria
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1
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Male or female patients ≥ 18 years of age
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2
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Samples can be used for investigational purposes according to the applicable laws
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3
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Histological confirmed primary or metastatic NSCLC with known EGFR status
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4
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For Idylla™ testing: one slice or slide with a minimum of 10% tumor cells of the total tissue used (if this is not obtained, macro-dissection is to be performed to reach at least 10% tumor cells in total tissue area used)
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5
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FFPE blocks from the institute, which preferably had a maximum fixation time of 48 hours (routine procedure) and are preferably not older than 5 years after the date of collection, stored at ambient conditions
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111 samples were excluded mainly due to the absence of results obtained with the version 2 of the comparator test, and because, after the revision of the remaining material, we found it insufficient. The final study included 132 of the 179 selected samples (table 2). For further 47 samples tested either by Idylla™ and/or the comparator test were invalid and the repetition was not possible due to insufficient tissue material, insufficient tumor tissue area and/or % tumor nuclei <10%.
Table 2: CPE study cohort.
CPE study
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Positive EGFR
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Negative EGFR
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Total
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Sevilla
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27
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47
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74
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Jaen
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6
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0
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6
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Leuven
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19
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22
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41
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Bellvitge
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11
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0
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11
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Total
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63
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69
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132
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Patients provided informed consent for investigational purposes and the institutional ethics committees of all these centers approved the study. Main features of the patients are shown in table 3.
Table 3: demographic and clinical characteristics of patients. * Mean age (year) at tumor collection date.
Total number (NSCLC)
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132
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Gender
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Male: 56% Female: 43% Missing: 1%
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Mean age (year)*
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65
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Sd: 10.12 median: 65
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min: 44 max: 85
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Missing: 11
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Tissue location
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Number of patients (%)
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Primary
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85 (64%)
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Distant metastases
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15 (11.5%)
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Metastasis in lymph nodes or pleura
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15 (11.5%)
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Unknown
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17 (13%)
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Once CPE study was finished, the reference lab included 82 extra samples [from HUVR, HUB, Hospital Universitario Mútua Terrassa, Spain (HUMT) and Facultade de Medicina da Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal (FMUC)]. After the exclusion of 29 of these samples for the same reasons as described earlier, 53 samples were compared for Idylla™ and comparator test (supplementary table S1).
Five-µm thick FFPE tissue sections were prepared as close as possible to the sections previously used to generate the reference results. Tumor content, percentage of necrosis, presence/absence of TAR (a large variety of organic and inorganic chemicals generated by burning tobacco that forms a brown substance between lung cells; it is the main cause of lung and throat cancer in smokers.) and area were determined on a hematoxylin-eosin (HE)-stained slide by a pathologist. Macro-dissection was performed to achieve tumor cell content of at least 10%.
Therascreen® EGFR RGQ PCR Kit version 2 used as reference method
Therascreen® EGFR RGQ PCR Kit (version 2) was performed according to the manufacturer´s instructions. This is an In-Vitro Diagnostic (IVD) test for the detection of 29 somatic mutations G719A/S/C in exon 18, 19 deletions in exon 19, T790M, S768I and 3 insertions in exon 20, and L858R, L861Q in exon 21 in the EGFR oncogene, using Scorpions® and ARMS® technologies in real-time PCR. The Therascreen® EGFR RGQ PCR Kit was tested on DNA samples extracted from FFPE tumor tissue from NSCLC patients (Qiagen QIAamp® DNA FFPE-kit), and run on a Rotor-Gene Q MDx instrument.
Idylla™ EGFR Mutation Test
The Idylla™ EGFR Mutation Test used in the study was an investigational use only labeled product as the IVD version was at that moment not yet commercially available. This was the same product as the IVD version except for its labeling. The Idylla™ EGFR Mutation Test is a test for the qualitative detection of 51 EGFR mutations: exon 18 (G719A/S/C), 36 deletions in exon 19, exon 20 (T790M, S768I), 5 insertions in exon 20 and exon 21 (L858R, L861Q) in the EGFR oncogene in FFPE human malignant lung cancer.
FFPE tissue sections were placed directly into the cartridge of the fully automated Idylla™ platform (Biocartis, Mechelen, Belgium) following the manufacturer´s instructions, without requiring prior manual deparaffinization or FFPE pre-processing. With a hands-on time of less than 2 min and a total turnaround time of 150 minutes, the instrument covers fully integrated sample preparation (with a combination of reagents, enzymes, heat, and high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) inducing deparaffinization, disruption of the tissue, and lysis of the cells) combined with PCR thermocycling (via microfluidic channels in the cartridge, nucleic acids are transported into 5 separated chambers with dried form PCR reagents) and fluorescence detection of target sequences, using allele specific primers. A sample processing control (SPC) is included in each run and the presence of a mutant genotype is determined by calculating the ΔCq (quantification cycle) between the EGFR SPC and the EGFR mutant signal(s). All required consumables are provided in the cartridge and the Idylla™ Console and the Idylla™ instruments are CE marked.
Evaluation of samples and interferences
Although inclusion criteria were well established, an assessment was made for different characteristics of samples to avoid invalid or false results, including:
i) Age of prepared FFPE blocks: 14 samples with an unknown preparation date and 9 blocks older than 5 years.
ii) Macro-dissection: needed to increase the percentage tumor nuclei to reach at least 10%.
iii) Tissue area: tissue area of samples was between 1 and 567 mm2, since there was no minimum tissue area requirement input for the EGFR Mutation test.
iv) Other interferences: the presence of necrotic tissue and TAR.
Nevertheless, if an invalid result was obtained, both tests were repeated once. Invalid results may be caused by a variety of reasons including presence of inhibitors in the sample, insufficient DNA, incorrect placement of a sample in a cartridge and/or sample volume out of range.
Analysis of discordant results
A third method was used to further analyze some of the samples having an Idylla™ EGFR Mutation Test result not concordant with the result of the reference method. Next generation sequencing (NGS) and/or Droplet Digital™ PCR (ddPCR) was used depending on the quantity of leftover material available.
NGS was done (with a minimum amount of 8 slices) by a validated workflow of the Tumor Hotspot MASTR™ Plus kit (Multiplicom) on the Illumina MiSeq Dx instrument. NGS and the subsequent data-analyses pipeline was done by Histogenex (minimal total mean read depth of 185.000, exon coverage of 500x mean read depth).
The ddPCR was performed at Biocartis. ddPCR was done on liquefied FFPE material using commercially available ddPCR assays (Droplet Digital™ PCR Assays and QX200 ddPCR system, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc.). These predesigned assays contain probes for the detection of both WT and specific mutations. Samples were considered positive by ddPCR when the % mutant was ≥ 1%, except for T790M which was considered positive when the % mutant was ≥ 5%.
Furthermore, it was necessary to analyze the degree of fragmentation to see if the DNA in the discordant samples was heavily fragmented or not, which could be a problem for a PCR based analysis method like Idylla™. A 5-plex PCR developed by Biocartis was executed. Samples were liquefied on the platform following a PCR reaction for 5 housekeeping genes: β-actin (321bp), ABCB (213bp), TFRC (149bp), HPRT (105bp) and RNaseP (63bp). A sample is considered fragmented when the size of the amplicons detected with the 5-plex PCR is smaller than the amplicons that would be needed for the EGFR test (EGFR PCR products range from 67 to 170 bp).
Statistical analysis
95% two sided confidence interval based on Wilson’s score method [18] at the dichotomous level, “mutation detected” versus “no mutation detected” was used for the estimation of total, positive and negative agreement.
Specificity and sensitivity were defined as the proportion of concordant results against the sum of concordant and discordant results (true positives / (true positives + false negatives) and true negatives / (true negatives + false positives). Analyses were performed in R software 3.2.5 (R Core Development Team, 2016).