Detection of ALK fusion transcripts in FFPE lung cancer samples by NanoString technology

BACKGROUND: ALK-rearranged lung cancers exhibit specific pathologic and clinical features and are responsive to anti-ALK therapies. Therefore, the detection of ALK-rearrangement is fundamental for personalized lung cancer therapy. Recently, new molecular techniques, such as NanoString nCounter, have been developed to detect ALK fusions with more accuracy and sensitivity. METHODS: In the present study, we intended to validate a NanoString nCounter ALK-fusion panel in routine biopsies of FFPE lung cancer patients. A total of 43 samples were analyzed, 13 ALK-positive and 30 ALK-negative, as previously detected by FISH and/or immunohistochemistry. RESULTS: The NanoString panel detected the presence of the EML4-ALK, KIF5B-ALK and TFG-ALK fusion variants. We observed that all the 13 ALK-positive cases exhibited genetic aberrations by the NanoString methodology. Namely, six cases (46.15%) presented EML-ALK variant 1, two (15.38%) presented EML-ALK variant 2, two (15.38%) presented EML-ALK variant 3a, and three (23.07%) exhibited no variant but presented unbalanced expression between 5’/3’ exons, similar to other positive samples. Importantly, for all these analyses, the initial input of RNA was 100 ng, and some cases displayed poor RNA quality measurements. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, we reported the great utility of NanoString technology in the assessment of ALK fusions in routine lung biopsies of FFPE specimens. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12890-017-0428-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.