Non-Invasive Monitoring of Liver Cancer Recurrence Following Surgery and/or Transplant Using Circulating Tumour DNA Sequencing (ctDNA in HCC)

Non-Invasive Monitoring of Liver Cancer Recurrence Following Surgery and/or Transplant Using Circulating Tumour DNA Sequencing (ctDNA in HCC)

Project Title:   Non-Invasive Monitoring of Liver Cancer Recurrence Following Surgery and/or Transplant Using Circulating Tumour DNA Sequencing (ctDNA in HCC)

Project Duration: 2017-2030

MOHCCN Consortium: Princess Margaret Cancer Consortium

Investigators:  Dr. Anand Ghanekar, Dr. Trevor Pugh, Dr. Gonzalo Sapisochin, Nadia Rukavina, Roxana Bucur, Aileigh Kay, Shiva Babakhani, Bianca Oricchio Kirsh, Mazdak Bagherie-Lachian, Kui Chen, Tommy Ivanics, Marco Claasen, Felipe Gaviria, Dr. Steven Gallinger, Dr. Ian McGilvray Dr. Carol-Anne Moulton, Dr. Mark Cattral, Dr. Markus Selzner,Dr. Leslie Lilly, Dr. Mamatha Bhat, Dr. Nazia Selzner, Dr. Sandra Fischer,Dr. Laura Dawson, Dr. Jennifer Knox, Dr. Eric Chen, Dr. Rob Beecroft, Dr. John Kachura, Dr. Daniel De Carvalho, Dr. Scott Bratman, Dr. Sonya MacParland, Dr. Rob Grant, Dr. Chaya Shwaartz, Dr. Lillian Siu, Dr. Ben Wang

Partners: 

  • Princess Margaret Cancer Centre
  • OICR

Aim/goals:

  1. To evaluate the clinical validity and utility of genomics for real-time clinical decision making for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)
  2. To investigate the temporal heterogeneity of HCC tumours and their corresponding plasmas

Summary:

HCC patients undergo either surgical resection or transplant for treatment. Many of the transplant HCC patients also undergo bridging therapies until transplantation such as microwave ablation. We are characterizing HCC primary tumours using whole genome sequencing (WGS) and when available the relapse tumours will also be sequenced using WGS. Briefly, we are evaluating the clinical validity of WGS for real-time clinical decision versus static tumour characteristics such as tumour size and number. We will also investigate the temporal heterogeneity of HCC tumours and their corresponding plasmas with a focus on clonal mutations/signatures and changes in variant allele frequency (VAF). In particular, we will classify clonal mutations based on their presence in primary tumor, recurrent tumor and/or plasma cell-free DNA (cfDNA).