Detecting gene fusions involving driver oncogenes is pivotal in clinical diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients. Recent developments in next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have enabled improved assays for bioinformatics-based gene fusions detection. In clinical applications, where a small number of fusions are clinically actionable, targeted polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based NGS chemistries, such as the QIAseq RNAscan assay, aim to improve accuracy compared to standard RNA sequencing. Existing informatics methods for gene fusion detection in NGS-based RNA sequencing assays traditionally use a transcriptome-based spliced alignment approach or a de-novo assembly approach. Transcriptome-based spliced alignment methods face challenges with short read mapping yielding low quality alignments. De-novo assembly-based methods yield longer contigs from short reads that can be more sensitive for genomic rearrangements, but face performance and scalability challenges. Consequently, there exists a need for a method to efficiently and accurately detect fusions in targeted PCR-based NGS chemistries. We describe SeekFusion, a highly accurate and computationally efficient pipeline enabling identification of gene fusions from PCR-based NGS chemistries. Utilizing biological samples processed with the QIAseq RNAscan assay and in-silico simulated data we demonstrate that SeekFusion gene fusion detection accuracy outperforms popular existing methods such as STAR-Fusion, TOPHAT-Fusion and JAFFA-hybrid. We also present results from 4,484 patient samples tested for neurological tumors and sarcoma, encompassing details on some novel fusions identified.

SeekFusion - A Clinically Validated Fusion Transcript Detection Pipeline for PCR-Based Next-Generation Sequencing of RNA / Balan, Jagadheshwar; Jenkinson, Garrett; Nair, Asha; Saha, Neiladri; Koganti, Tejaswi; Voss, Jesse; Zysk, Christopher; Barr Fritcher, Emily G; Ross, Christian A; Giannini, Caterina; Raghunathan, Aditya; Kipp, Benjamin R; Jenkins, Robert; Ida, Cris; Halling, Kevin C; Blackburn, Patrick R; Dasari, Surendra; Oliver, Gavin R; Klee, Eric W. - In: FRONTIERS IN GENETICS. - ISSN 1664-8021. - ELETTRONICO. - 12:(2021), pp. 739054.1-739054.16. [10.3389/fgene.2021.739054]

SeekFusion - A Clinically Validated Fusion Transcript Detection Pipeline for PCR-Based Next-Generation Sequencing of RNA

Giannini, Caterina;
2021

Abstract

Detecting gene fusions involving driver oncogenes is pivotal in clinical diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients. Recent developments in next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have enabled improved assays for bioinformatics-based gene fusions detection. In clinical applications, where a small number of fusions are clinically actionable, targeted polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based NGS chemistries, such as the QIAseq RNAscan assay, aim to improve accuracy compared to standard RNA sequencing. Existing informatics methods for gene fusion detection in NGS-based RNA sequencing assays traditionally use a transcriptome-based spliced alignment approach or a de-novo assembly approach. Transcriptome-based spliced alignment methods face challenges with short read mapping yielding low quality alignments. De-novo assembly-based methods yield longer contigs from short reads that can be more sensitive for genomic rearrangements, but face performance and scalability challenges. Consequently, there exists a need for a method to efficiently and accurately detect fusions in targeted PCR-based NGS chemistries. We describe SeekFusion, a highly accurate and computationally efficient pipeline enabling identification of gene fusions from PCR-based NGS chemistries. Utilizing biological samples processed with the QIAseq RNAscan assay and in-silico simulated data we demonstrate that SeekFusion gene fusion detection accuracy outperforms popular existing methods such as STAR-Fusion, TOPHAT-Fusion and JAFFA-hybrid. We also present results from 4,484 patient samples tested for neurological tumors and sarcoma, encompassing details on some novel fusions identified.
2021
SeekFusion - A Clinically Validated Fusion Transcript Detection Pipeline for PCR-Based Next-Generation Sequencing of RNA / Balan, Jagadheshwar; Jenkinson, Garrett; Nair, Asha; Saha, Neiladri; Koganti, Tejaswi; Voss, Jesse; Zysk, Christopher; Barr Fritcher, Emily G; Ross, Christian A; Giannini, Caterina; Raghunathan, Aditya; Kipp, Benjamin R; Jenkins, Robert; Ida, Cris; Halling, Kevin C; Blackburn, Patrick R; Dasari, Surendra; Oliver, Gavin R; Klee, Eric W. - In: FRONTIERS IN GENETICS. - ISSN 1664-8021. - ELETTRONICO. - 12:(2021), pp. 739054.1-739054.16. [10.3389/fgene.2021.739054]
Balan, Jagadheshwar; Jenkinson, Garrett; Nair, Asha; Saha, Neiladri; Koganti, Tejaswi; Voss, Jesse; Zysk, Christopher; Barr Fritcher, Emily G; Ross, Christian A; Giannini, Caterina; Raghunathan, Aditya; Kipp, Benjamin R; Jenkins, Robert; Ida, Cris; Halling, Kevin C; Blackburn, Patrick R; Dasari, Surendra; Oliver, Gavin R; Klee, Eric W
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11585/901997
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