Reporting Tumor Molecular Heterogeneity in Histopathological Diagnosis

Detection of molecular tumor heterogeneity has become of paramount importance with the advent of targeted therapies. Analysis for detection should be comprehensive, timely and based on routinely available tumor samples.To evaluate the diagnostic potential of targeted multigene next-generation sequencing (TM-NGS) in characterizing gastrointestinal cancer molecular heterogeneity. mutations were validated by conventional Sanger sequencing.TM-NGS yielded overlapping results on matched fresh-frozen and formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissues, with a mutation detection limit of 1% for fresh-frozen high molecular weight DNA and 2% for FFPE partially degraded DNA. At least one somatic mutation was observed in all tumors tested; multiple alterations were detected in 20/35 (57%) tumors. Seven cancers displayed significant differences in allelic frequencies for distinct mutations, indicating the presence of intratumor molecular heterogeneity; this was confirmed on selected samples by immunohistochemistry of p53 and Smad4, showing concordance with mutational analysis.TM-NGS is able to detect and quantitate multiple gene alterations from limited amounts of DNA, moving one step closer to a next-generation histopathologic diagnosis that integrates morphologic, immunophenotypic, and multigene mutational analysis on routinely processed tissues, essential for personalized cancer therapy