Archival bone marrow smears are useful in targeted next-generation sequencing for diagnosing myeloid neoplasms

PLoS One. 2021 Jul 23;16(7):e0255257. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0255257. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

Gene abnormalities, including mutations and fusions, are important determinants in the molecular diagnosis of myeloid neoplasms. The use of bone marrow (BM) smears as a source of DNA and RNA for next-generation sequencing (NGS) enables molecular diagnosis to be done with small amounts of bone marrow and is especially useful for patients without stocked cells, DNA or RNA. The present study aimed to analyze the quality of DNA and RNA derived from smear samples and the utility of NGS for diagnosing myeloid neoplasms. Targeted DNA sequencing using paired BM cells and smears yielded sequencing data of adequate quality for variant calling. The detected variants were analyzed using the bioinformatics approach to detect mutations reliably and increase sensitivity. Noise deriving from variants with extremely low variant allele frequency (VAF) was detected in smear sample data and removed by filtering. Consequently, various driver gene mutations were detected across a wide range of allele frequencies in patients with myeloid neoplasms. Moreover, targeted RNA sequencing successfully detected fusion genes using smear-derived, very low-quality RNA, even in a patient with a normal karyotype. These findings demonstrated that smear samples can be used for clinical molecular diagnosis with adequate noise-reduction methods even if the DNA and RNA quality is inferior.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Biopsy / methods
  • Biopsy / standards
  • Bone Marrow / pathology*
  • Gene Frequency
  • Genetic Testing / methods*
  • Genetic Testing / standards
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing / methods*
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing / standards
  • Humans
  • Leukemia, Myeloid / diagnosis
  • Leukemia, Myeloid / genetics*
  • Leukemia, Myeloid / pathology
  • Mutation
  • Sensitivity and Specificity
  • Tissue Preservation / methods*
  • Tissue Preservation / standards

Grants and funding

This research was supported in part by Clinical Research Fund (R010302001) of Tokyo Metropolitan Government (https://www.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/), and JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Number JP20K07840) of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (https://www.jsps.go.jp/). All grants were awarded to Y.H. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.