Methylation-based droplet digital polymerase chain reaction shows high concordance with chronic lymphocytic leukemia IGHV somatic mutation status

Objective Somatic hypermutation at immunoglobulin heavy chain variable (IGHV) genes, an established prognostic and predictive biomarker for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), is assessed by gene sequencing. We developed a single methylation-specific droplet digital polymerase chain reaction (methyl-ddPCR) to predict IGHV status in patients with CLL. Methods The CLL methylation array and IGHV data from the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) were used for biomarker discovery. Top-ranked candidate regions were manually screened for PCR primer and probe binding sites. A single methyl-ddPCR was evaluated on an internal cohort of CLLs with mutated (M), unmutated (U), and inconclusive IGHV results originally determined by next-generation sequencing (NGS). Results Analysis of ICGC data identified array probe cg23844018 as a candidate for the PCR. The corresponding CpG site showed high methylation levels in U-CLL and lower levels in M-CLL. On the internal cohort, a single optimal cutoff correctly classified 104 of 115 U- and M-CLLs (90.4%; area under the curve = 0.96). The PCR data correlated with some prognostic fluorescence in situ hybridization and CLL subset groupings. Limited analysis suggests that the PCR may be able to stratify some patients with CLL who have inconclusive results on IGHV NGS testing. Conclusions The methyl-ddPCR showed high concordance with CLL IGHV status in an internal cohort.