Diagnosis of pancreatic lesions collected by endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration using next-generation sequencing

Endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration (EUF-FNA) has improved the diagnosis of pancreatic lesions. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) facilitates the production of millions of sequences concurrently. Therefore, in the current study, to improve the detectability of oncogenic mutations in pancreatic lesions, an NGS system was used to diagnose EUS-FNA samples. A total of 38 patients with clinically diagnosed EUS-FNA specimens were analyzed; 27 patients had pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) and 11 had non-PDAC lesions. DNA samples were isolated and sequenced by NGS using an Ion Personal Genome Machine system. The Cancer Hotspot Panel v2, which includes 50 cancer-related genes and 2,790 COSMIC mutations, was used. A >2% mutation frequency was defined as positive. KRAS mutations were detected in 26 of 27 PDAC aspirates (96%) and 0 of 11 non-PDAC lesions (0%). The G12, G13, and Q61 KRAS mutations were found in 25, 0, and 1 of the 27 PDAC samples, respectively. Mutations were confirmed by TaqMan^® polymerase chain reaction analysis. TP53 mutations were detected in 12 of 27 PDAC aspirates (44%). SMAD4 was observed in 3 PDAC lesions and cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 2A in 4 PDAC lesions. Therefore, the current study was successfully able to develop an NGS assay with high clinical sensitivity for EUS-FNA samples.