ArticleBreast cancer research and treatment2024
Variant allele frequency in circulating tumor DNA correlated with tumor disease burden and predicted outcomes in patients with advanced breast cancer.
Article in Breast cancer research and treatment, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 9 citations in OpenAlex.
- Circulating tumour DNA and its clinical relevance in predicting progression-free survival and overall survival in patients with advanced breast cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Breast cancer research and treatment · 2026Pooled it
- Variant Allelic Frequency to Track Therapy Response and Evaluate Leptomeningeal Disease in Metastatic Central Nervous System Cancers.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Cross-Sectional Analysis of Metabolic Tumor Burden Detected by F-18 FDG PET/CT and Circulating Tumor DNA in Advanced Breast Cancer.Cancer medicine · 2025Article
- Circulating Tumor DNA as a Prognostic Biomarker for Selecting Participants to Early Phase Clinical Trials.Journal of immunotherapy and precision oncology · 2025Article
- Case Report WIN-MTB-2023001 WIN International Molecular Tumor Board A 62-year-old male with metastatic colorectal cancer with 5 prior lines of treatment.Oncotarget · 2025Article
- Tumor Profiling Using an NGS Cancer Hotspot Panel in Ukrainian Breast Cancer Patients: Initial Findings of Mutation Frequencies and Clinicopathologic Characteristics.Cancer control : journal of the Moffitt Cancer CenterArticle
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeIn patients with first-line advanced breast cancer (ABC), the correlation between ctDNA variant allele frequency (VAF) and tumor disease burden, and its prognostic value remains poorly investigated.
methodsThis study included patients with ABC diagnosed at Peking University Cancer Hospital who performed ctDNA test before receiving first-line treatment. Baseline plasma samples were collected for assessing ctDNA alterations and VAF with next-generation sequencing. The sum of tumor target lesion diameters (SLD) was measured with imaging methods according to RECIST 1.1 criteria.
resultsThe final cohort included 184 patients. The median age of the cohort was 49.4 (IQR: 42.3-56.8) years. The median VAF was 15.6% (IQR: 5.4%-33.7%). VAF showed positive correlation with SLD in patients with relatively large tumor lesions (r = 0.314, p = 0.003), but not in patients with small tumor lesions (p = 0.226). VAF was associated with multiple metastasis sites (p = 0.001). Multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that high VAF was associated with shorter overall survival (OS) (HR: 3.519, 95% confidence interval (CI): 2.149-5.761), and first-line progression-free survival (PFS) (HR: 2.352, 95%CI: 1.462-3.782). Combined VAF and SLD improved prediction performance, both median OS and PFS of patients in VAF(H)/SLD(H) group were significantly longer than VAF(L)/SLD(L) group (mOS: 49.3 vs. 174.1 months; mPFS: 9.6 vs. 25.3 months).
conclusionctDNA VAF associated with tumor disease burden, and was a prognostic factor for patients with ABC. A combination of ctDNA test and radiographic imaging might enhance tumor burden evaluation, and improve prognosis stratification in patients with ABC.
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