1. Cell-free DNA from germline TP53 mutation carriers reflect cancer-like fragmentation patterns
- Author
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Derek Wong, Maha Tageldein, Ping Luo, Erik Ensminger, Jeffrey Bruce, Leslie Oldfield, Haifan Gong, Nicholas William Fischer, Brianne Laverty, Vallijah Subasri, Scott Davidson, Reem Khan, Anita Villani, Adam Shlien, Raymond H. Kim, David Malkin, and Trevor J. Pugh
- Subjects
Science - Abstract
Abstract Germline pathogenic TP53 variants predispose individuals to a high lifetime risk of developing multiple cancers and are the hallmark feature of Li-Fraumeni syndrome (LFS). Our group has previously shown that LFS patients harbor shorter plasma cell-free DNA fragmentation; independent of cancer status. To understand the functional underpinning of cfDNA fragmentation in LFS, we conducted a fragmentomic analysis of 199 cfDNA samples from 82 TP53 mutation carriers and 30 healthy TP53-wildtype controls. We find that LFS individuals exhibit an increased prevalence of A/T nucleotides at fragment ends, dysregulated nucleosome positioning at p53 binding sites, and loci-specific changes in chromatin accessibility at development-associated transcription factor binding sites and at cancer-associated open chromatin regions. Machine learning classification resulted in robust differentiation between TP53 mutant versus wildtype cfDNA samples (AUC-ROC = 0.710–1.000) and intra-patient longitudinal analysis of ctDNA fragmentation signal enabled early cancer detection. These results suggest that cfDNA fragmentation may be a useful diagnostic tool in LFS patients and provides an important baseline for cancer early detection.
- Published
- 2024
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