Performance of the cobas EZH2 mutation test on clinical samples from non-Hodgkin lymphoma patients

Abstract

Objective To present the technical verification and clinical validation of the companion diagnostic assay, cobas® EZH2 Mutation Test (cobas EZH2 Test), targeting gain-of-function EZH2 mutations in follicular lymphoma (FL) and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). The focus is on patient clinical samples proving that the test met the performance criteria required for FDA approval of a companion diagnostic test. Design Epizyme, Inc., Eisai Co., Ltd., and Roche Molecular Systems, Inc., collaborated to develop the cobas EZH2 Test on an RT-PCR platform. The assay design needed to detect the gain-of-function EZH2 mutations found in FL and DLBCL indications. Thus, the test was optimized for investigational purposes in a clinical trial setting. Part of its technical verification included testing of patient tumor samples with a documented diagnosis of FL and DLBCL procured from commercial vendors, and the clinical validation used patient samples from the Epizyme clinical study. Both the technical performance verification method correlation study (104 clinical commercially acquired samples) and the clinical validation accuracy study (341 patient samples from the therapeutic study) used next-generation sequencing as a reference method to establish true vs. false results by cobas EZH2 Test. The reproducibility study used a 15-member panel of DNA samples with varying EZH2 mutation status from procured clinical FL and DLBCL patient samples under multiple variables. Results Single and rare, infrequent double EZH2 mutations were detected in FL and DLBCL samples. Agreements between results from cobas EZH2 and sequencing were >98% from commercial clinical samples and from the therapeutic study clinical samples. The reproducibility study obtained 178 to 180 valid results for each panel member, with an overall invalid rate of 0.37%. The agreement for each per panel member was 100%. Conclusion cobas EZH2 Test data demonstrated that the test is reliable and will perform well in a commercial customer environment.