Assessment of Homologous Repair Deficiency status in Triple Negative Breast and Ovarian Carcinoma using Genetic and Epigenetic Next Generation Sequencing Assays

Temple University Hospital and Fox Chase Cancer Center paired Pillar’s oncoReveal® HRDv2 mutation panel with a quantitative oncoReveal® methylation assay to assess homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) — the phenotype predicting PARP inhibitor response — in retrospective ovarian and triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) specimens. Seventy-one FFPE samples (43 ovarian, 28 TNBC) were microdissected and tested for both pathogenic variants and BRCA1, RAD51C, and XRCC3 promoter hypermethylation on the Illumina MiSeq with PiVAT® analysis. Pathogenic HRD mutations appeared in 56 of 71 specimens (79%), and methylation flagged additional HRD-positive cases that mutation testing alone would have missed.