The utility of clonal relatedness molecular testing in cytology: An institutional experience.

INTRODUCTION

Clonal relatedness (CR) testing is a molecular modality that compares genomic profiles of two tumors belonging to two different specimens via next generation sequencing to help determine tumor primary origin by calculating their clonality score, statistical test using in-house developed bioinformatics pipeline. Utility of CR in cytology is not well characterized. This study investigates the utility of CR in cytology practice at the authors' institution.

METHODS

Cytology cases that underwent CR testing were retrospectively retrieved from our institutional archives from the last fifteen years. Demographics, tumor location, final diagnosis and CR results were collected and analyzed.

RESULTS

Nine cytology cases with CR testing were retrieved. Tumor site from cytology samples included lung, pancreas, liver, retroperitoneum, and lymph node. Tumor site from surgical specimens included lung, liver, parotid, epiglottis, renal pelvis, and mandible. CR showed definite results in 6 cases (67%; 4 clonally related and 2 not-clonally related). 1 case (11%) showed indeterminate results due to mutational differences between the two tested tumors. 2 cases (22%) failed due to insufficient material in cellblock or limited DNA quality/quantity of the comparison case.

CONCLUSION

CR had significant clinical utility and was definitive in 67% of our cases. We recommend CR in challenging cytology cases as it helps guide clinical management and potentially informs more tailored therapeutic strategies. CR testing can present technical challenges when there is limited nuclear content for analysis, therefore, it's important for the cytopathologist to properly triage specimens and understand what ancillary studies are most beneficial for the patient.