Fragmentomics profiling and quantification of plasma Epstein-Barr virus DNA enhance prediction of future nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Abstract

Fragmentomics analysis of plasma autosomal DNA has shown promise in cancer diagnostics. Here we evaluated the clinical utility of plasma Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) DNA fragmentomics analysis for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) screening. Among our prospective cohort of approximately 20,000 subjects that underwent two rounds of screening, we analyzed the first-round blood samples of subjects who tested positive for EBV DNA via polymerase chain reaction (PCR) (n = 558). We found that those who subsequently developed NPC in the second round exhibited a distinctive mononucleosomal size pattern, an NPC-associated end motif (specifically, a depletion of CC-motif) and aberrations in methylation identified through fragmentomics-based methylation analysis (FRAGMA). Subjects with these aberrant fragmentomics features and higher quantity of EBV DNA had a relative risk of 87.1 times greater for developing NPC in the second round compared to subjects tested negative for EBV DNA on PCR. These results demonstrate plasma DNA fragmentomics could predict future cancer risk.

Keywords: cancer screening; circulating tumor DNA; liquid biopsy; precision oncology; risk prediction.