Here is a tweetorial from our latest publication in @Annals_Oncology about longitudinal tracking of esophageal adenocarcinoma. #OesophagealCancer #EsophagealCancer https://t.co/QWvrzBXmK7 1/8

We sequenced 245 plasma samples from 97 patients with oesophageal adenocarcinoma using a 77 gene pan-cancer ctDNA panel. 2/8
Variants derived from previously characterised driver oesophageal adenocarcinoma genes had a significantly higher VAF than variants from other genes, indicating selection. 3/8
Peripheral blood cell samples were also sequenced for 78/97 patients. CHIP mutations were identified in 23% of cases, longitudinal tracking of CHIP variants suggested these variants were dynamic over time. 4/8
We found patients that were ctDNA positive post-surgery had a significantly poorer survival than ctDNA negative patients, and the elimination of CHIP variants improved the positive predictive value. 5/8
In summary, we demonstrate in a large, national, prospectively-collected dataset that ctDNA in plasma following surgery for EAC is prognostic for relapse. Inclusion of peripheral blood cell samples can reduce or eliminate false positives from CHIP. 6/8
In the future, post-operative ctDNA could be used to risk stratify patients into high- and low-risk groups for intensification or de-escalation of adjuvant chemotherapy. 7/8
Many thanks to our founders and all patients who participated within the OCCAMS consortium framework. The study was carried out by our brilliant PhD student Emma Ococks, medical oncologist @LizzySmyth1, postdoc @AFrankell, and postdoc @neus_snows among others @MRC_CU. 8/8
@threadreaderapp unroll please

More from Health

Before we get too far into 2021, I thought I’d write a thread recapping some of the research that came out of my lab in 2020. Most of this work was led by my talented team of graduate students, Kerrianne Morrison, @kmdebrabander, and @DesiRJones.

Back in January, a news story was published about Kerrianne’s study showing improved social interaction outcomes for autistic adults when paired with another autistic partner.

A detailed thread about the study and a link to the paper can be found here (feel free to DM me your email address if you’d like a copy of the full paper for this study or any of our studies):


Another paper published early in 2020 (it appeared a few months earlier online) showed that traditional standalone tasks of social cognition are less predictive of functional and social skills among autistic adults than commonly assumed in autism research.


Next, @kmdebrabander led and published an innovative study about how well autistic and non-autistic adults can predict their own cognitive and social cognitive performance.

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