Tag: genetic testing

I first started in my current lab back in 2008. At that time, we did not have a separate section for testing solid tumors in our lab. The small amount of testing we did have were for three different types of sarcomas, and we still used a thermal cycler that didn’t have a heated lid, so we had to put mineral oil over the top of the reactions…

Fast forward eleven years and we now have a “bench” dedicated to solid tumor testing with next generation sequencing as a major part of this testing. We have been running our current solid tumor assay, a hotspot panel of fifty genes, for almost five years now and it has served us well. However, many of our oncologists have been starting to ask for more. We have begun the search for a larger panel to fulfill the needs of our oncologists and our patient population. As a smaller lab, we are somewhat limited in resources and are not quite ready to go completely custom, so we are left with kitted options from major vendors. As we research and evaluate these options, though, certain questions come to light. These panels have more than 150 genes and upwards of 500 genes in order to cover the most relevant genes in a number of different cancers. The areas tested in these genes are important for therapy and/or prognosis, but with the sheer number of bases we are looking at, we are bound to find many variants that do not have a known significance.

So, question one, how do the pathologists deal with trying to interpret the large number of variants of unknown significance (VUS’s)? Currently, with our very limited 50 gene panel, we may get one or two VUS’s, so it doesn’t take much time to assign significance and sign out the report. Our myeloid panel, which is a larger panel of 40 genes, some with full gene coverage, though, can sometimes result in reports with eight to ten VUS’s. These reports take a lot of time to research the potential impact each of these variants will have in the disease. I have seen reports from some of these large gene panels that have upwards of 25 or more VUS’s detected in a single specimen. How are these handled in the pathologists’ workflow? Can time be taken to investigate each of these, or are they just placed in a list in the report?

Question two, how do the oncologists feel when they receive a report with few, if any, variants with known significance, and many variants with unknown significance? Does this help at all, or make it more difficult and frustrating? I’d be interested if anyone has feedback in this area. In our internal tumor boards, when we review testing done at other locations, a great deal of time is spent trying to filter through the results to see how they can help point to the best possible treatment for the patient. If the variants do not point to therapy or clinical trials, those variants are not currently helpful.

Lastly, if and when we bring up a larger panel, do we keep running our smaller 50 gene panel? We believe the answer to this one is easy – yes. The amount of DNA needed for some of these larger panels is more than what we can get sometimes from the smaller biopsies. Also, insurance may not always cover the larger panels. The information we get from the 50 gene panel is still very useful and can point the oncologists to therapy options, as well as clinical trials, so we believe the smaller panel will still have a place in our lab.

-Sharleen Rapp, BS, MB (ASCP)^CM is a Molecular Diagnostics Coordinator in the Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory at Nebraska Medicine. 

As a part of my Molecular Genetic Pathology fellowship, we experience a clinical component to training in addition to all of the laboratory training we receive. This last month, I rotated through Cancer Genetics, where genetic counselors discuss genetic testing with patients with a personal or family history of cancer. The counselors describe the process of genetic testing and help chose genetic tests to look at the patient’s risk for an inherited cancer syndrome.

Patients are looking forward to the certainty that will come from a genetic test, because it is the wave of the future and they think you can learn so many things from your genetics. The truth, however, can be much less clear. Up to 30% of people receive a Variant of Uncertain Significance (VUS) as their genetic test result. This rate increases as larger panels are test more genes.

A VUS represents a variation in a person’s gene that doesn’t have enough information to say that it is benign or pathogenic. This gray zone is very uncomfortable and confusing for patients and providers alike. There are several cases where someone acted on a VUS as if it were a pathogenic variant and ended up having radical interventions like a bilateral mastectomy.

We know that as scientific and medical knowledge increases, our ability to reclassify these variants improves. For laboratories, this means periodic reanalysis of previously reported variants. If this process is not properly set up, it can be very laborious and extensive. Furthermore, not only was a timeline for variant reanalysis unknown, but also the likelihood of variants becoming upgraded or downgraded had not been described.

Two recent studies helped provide some answers to these questions. The first, published in JAMA, comes from the cancer genetic group I was working with, led by Dr. Theo Ross M.D. Ph.D., worked in conjunction with Myraid (Lab that first started testing the BRCA genes, and now tests many more) to determine how often variants were reclassified. Looking at 1.1 million individuals tested at Myriad, the average time to reclassification for a VUS was 1.2-1.9 years (Mersch J et al Jama 2018). Additionally, 90% of VUS were downgraded to benign/ likely benign representing 97% of patients with a VUS. This figure from the paper shows how the time to issuing a reclassification (amended report) has decreased (Figure 2).

I worked on the second study, which looked at variant reclassification in childhood epilepsy genetic testing (SoRelle et al JAMA Peds 2019). The results, published in JAMA Pediatrics, also found most patients had a VUS reclassified to benign/likely benign. However, several clinically significant changes (reclassified to or from pathogenic/ likely pathogenic) occurred as well (Figure 3).

Furthermore, there was a linear relationship between the time the test was reported and the rate of variant reclassification (Figure 4). We found that 25% of patients with a VUS would experience a reclassification within 2 years.

Overall, the conclusions of the two studies are somewhat similar:

1. Most patients with a VUS experience a downgrade reclassification to likely benign or benign.
2. Variant reclassification should be performed at least every 2 years
3. Rates of reclassification may differ by disease type. Investigation by a similar study design should be performed in other genetic diseases.

References

1. Mersch J, Brown N, Pirzadeh-Miller S, Mundt E, Cox HC, Brown K, Aston M, Esterling L, Manley S, Ross T. Prevalence of variant reclassification following hereditary cancer genetic testing. JAMA. 2018;320:1266–1274.
2. SoRelle JA, Thodeson DM, Arnold S, Gotway G, Park JY. Clinical Utility of Reinterpreting Previously Reported Genomic Epilepsy Test Results for Pediatric Patients. JAMA Pediatr. 2018 Nov 5:e182302.

-Jeff SoRelle, MD is a Molecular Genetic Pathology fellow at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, TX. His clinical research interests include understanding how the lab intersects with transgender healthcare and advancing quality in molecular diagnostics.