Bin Liu,* Bingtian Zhao,* Yan Yin, Yan Jiang, Xue Feng, Lei Wang, Liang Zhai, Guangxin Liu, Dongsheng Shi, Jianwen Qin

Department of Respiratory and Critical Medicine, Tianjin Chest Hospital, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China

*These authors contributed equally to this work

Correspondence: Dongsheng Shi; Jianwen Qin, Tianjin Chest Hospital, No. 261, Taierzhuang South Road, Jinnan District, Tianjin, 300051, People’s Republic of China, Email shi_ds@126.com; qinjianwen2005@aliyun.com; 5020200603@nankai.edu.cn

Purpose: DNA methylation plays a regulatory role in the oncogenesis and tumor progression and is valuable in the diagnosis and prognosis of cancer. While circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) is widely used in the detection of oncogenic mutations and the guidance of treatment in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), studies of ctDNA methylation remains insufficient. We aim to investigate the methylation profiles of ctDNA in patients with advanced NSCLC undergoing EGFR-tyrosine kinase inhibitor (EGFR-TKI) therapy and to discover novel biomarkers with predictive or prognostic value.
Patients and Methods: We recruited 49 patients with EGFR-mutated advanced NSCLC undergoing EGFR-TKI as first-line treatment. Utilizing next-generation sequencing, we examined the somatic mutations and methylation signatures within the tumor-associated genomic regions of ctDNA from pre-treatment blood. Subsequently, we explored the association of these molecular features with the patients’ response to therapy and their progression-free survival (PFS).
Results: Genomic mutation profiling revealed no significant association of PFS or best overall response (BOR) and ctDNA status. Evaluation of ctDNA methylation showed a negative correlation between the methylation of small nucleolar RNA (snoRNA) genes and PFS (R=− 0.31, P=0.043). Furthermore, high-level methylation of SNORD3F was associated with poorer PFS (mPFS 346d vs 243d, HR 0.49, 95% CI 0.24– 0.93, P=0.029).
Conclusion: Our study explored the prognostic value of ctDNA methylation in patients with advanced NSCLC undergoing targeted therapies and first revealed the predictive role of SNORD3F.

Keywords: ctDNA, EGFR, DNA methylation, lung cancer, snoRNA, SNORD3F