Plasma circulating cell‐free MYCN gene: A noninvasive and prominent recurrence monitoring indicator of neuroblastoma

The postoperative recurrence of neuroblastoma (NB) patients is an essential reason for the high mortality of NB due to the lack of early, non‐invasive, and dynamic strategies for monitoring NB recurrence. Therefore, whether the plasma circulating cell‐free MYCN gene as an indicator for monitoring of NB recurrence was systematically evaluated. The MYCN copy number and NAGK (reference gene) copy number (M/N) ratio in plasma and corresponding tumor tissues of NB patients was detected using an economical, sensitive, and specific single‐tube dual RT‐PCR approach developed in this study. The plasma M/N ratio of the MYCN gene amplification (MNA) group (N = 25, median M/N ratio = 4.90) was significantly higher than that of the non‐MNA group (N = 71, median M/N ratio = 1.22), p < .001. The M/N ratio in NB plasma (N = 60) was positively correlated with the M/N ratio in NB tumor tissue (N = 60), with a correlation coefficient of 0.9496. In particular, the results of dynamic monitoring of postoperative plasma M/N ratio of NB patients showed that an abnormal increase in M/N ratio could be detected 1–2 months before recurrence in NB patients. In summary, the single‐tube double RT‐PCR approach can be used to quantitatively detect MYCN copy number. The copy number of MYCN in the tissue and plasma of NB patients is consistent with each other. More importantly, the circulating cell‐free MYCN gene of NB patients can be used as a monitoring indicator for early, non‐invasive, and dynamic monitoring of NB recurrence.