Real-Life Disease Monitoring in Follicular Lymphoma Patients Using Liquid Biopsy Ultra-Deep Sequencing and PET/CT

Abstract In the present study, we screened 84 Follicular Lymphoma patients for somatic mutations suitable as liquid biopsy MRD biomarkers using a targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) panel. We found trackable mutations in 95% of the lymph node samples and 80% of the liquid biopsy baseline samples. Then, we use an ultra-deep sequencing approach with 2 · 10− 4 sensitivity (LiqBio-MRD) to track those mutations on 156 follow-up liquid biopsy samples from 55 treated patients. Positive LiqBio-MRD correlated with a higher risk of progression both at the interim evaluation (HR 13.0, 95% CI 2.70–63.4, p < 0.001) and at the end of treatment (EOT, HR 14.3, 95% CI 4.4–46.4, p < 0.001). Similar results were observed by PET/CT Deauville score, with a median PFS of 19 months vs. NR (p < 0.001) at the interim and 13 months vs. NR (p < 0.001) at EOT. LiqBio-MRD and PET/CT combined identified the patients that progressed in less than two years with 89% sensitivity and 100% specificity. Our results demonstrate that LiqBio-MRD is a robust and non-invasive approach, complementary to metabolic imaging, for identifying FL patients at high risk of failure during the treatment and should be considered in future response-adapted clinical trials.