Abstract 1679P
Background
Results of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) increasingly incorporated in routine clinical oncology. Multiple guidelines and standards have been issued globally to support clinical NGS variant interpretation and are integrated in different ways into cancer NGS reports around the world. However, a thorough capture of how these guidelines are being translated in real-world laboratory reporting has not yet been clearly studied.
Methods
To this end, the Variant Interpretation for Cancer Consortium Virtual Molecular Tumor Board (VICC-VMTB), in collaboration with the Cancer Genomics Consortium (CGC) and the ClinGen Somatic Clinical Domain Working Group (CDWG), distributed a comprehensive survey regarding reporting practices for cancer NGS testing worldwide to identify essential elements and their actual occurrence in NGS reports. The survey is based on report examples seen in the VICC-VMTB working group and asks about general information on the tumor entity, the reported variants and their functional assessments, and treatment recommendations. Furthermore, the survey covers more complex information, such as the reporting of mutational signatures. Participants could also provide more context in free form.
Results
Seventy-nine survey responses representing 17 countries in 6 continents were collected. Most of the respondents are coming from North America (n=34) and Europe (n=23) giving us the unique opportunity to evaluate the use of reporting elements. NGS reports are mostly independent from type of malignancy. Consistently reported elements include but are not limited to: inclusion of the tissue source, diagnosis, protein-level amino acid sequence-based (p.) variant annotation. These elements are reported globally in a similar fashion. More complex elements, such as tumor mutational burden or information on clinical trials, are currently reported differently between Europe and North America.
Conclusions
This global survey is a snapshot of current reporting practices and can support guidance refinement on reporting structure and the necessary components of cancer NGS report. The comparison between regions helps further the discussions about differentially utilized report elements and clarify the context of their use globally.
Clinical trial identification
Editorial acknowledgement
Legal entity responsible for the study
The authors.
Funding
Has not received any funding.
Disclosure
All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.