Clinical implication and usefulness of de novo EGFR T790M mutation in lung adenocarcinoma with EGFR-tyrosine kinase inhibitor sensitizing mutation

ABSTRACT

Detection rate of de novo EGFR T790 M mutation was increased up to 80% through recent ultrasensitive detection methods. Here, we investigated the clinical significance and its usefulness of detecting de novo EGFR T790 M using ultrasensitive droplet-digital polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR) method.

In total, 102 cases diagnosed as lung adenocarcinoma with EGFR-tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) sensitizing mutations (mEGFR) and had been treated with 1^st ~ 2^nd generation EGFR-TKI alone were enrolled for this study. De novo T790 M status was tested using the tissues at the initial diagnosis and positivity was defined as the ratio of T790 M/wild-type copies over 0.00294 by ddPCR.

Seventy patients (68.6%) harbored the de novo T790 M. De novo T790 M was more frequently detected in cases with EGFR L858 R mutation than those with EGFR exon 19 deletion (E19d) mutations (P = 0.024). Forty-three patients underwent rebiopsy due to disease progression. The cases who experienced progression due to acquired T790 M were more likely to have E19d at initial diagnosis and the presence of de novo T790 M and the ratio of T790 M/wild-type copies did not relate to the emergence of acquired T790 M. On the other hand, the cases with a longer duration of disease-control by EGFR-TKI had higher change to get acquired T790 M mutation (P-value = 0.040).

The presence of de novo T790 M has limitation in predicting disease progression by acquired T790 M, suggesting that identifying de novo T790 M through the ultrasensitive methods may not be necessary identifying patients who would be beneficial by 3rd-generation EGFR-TKI as the 1st line treatment.

KEYWORDS:

• De novo T790M mutation
• lung adenocarcinoma
• droplet digital polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR)
• epidermal growth factor receptor-tyrosine kinase inhibitor sensitizing mutation

Disclose of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) awarded to YS Chang by the Korean government (MSIT; grant no. NRF-2017R1A2B4009017).