Integrative clinical sequencing data can improve clinical management of pediatric oncology cases, just as it is improving adult care, according to a study published Sept. 1 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Potentially actionable findings were found in 46 percent of pediatric cancer patients who had failed standard treatment and results informed clinical action (either change in treatment and family genetic counseling) for 25 percent of these patients. Delays in genomic analysis prevented further clinical actionability. The authors say that this is the first prospective, pediatric study to assess the feasibility and utility of incorporating multiple, comprehensive sequencing technologies (whole-exome and transcriptome analysis) in cancer care. Studying sequencing in pediatric oncology is complicated by the lower mutation frequency associated with pediatric tumors, compared to adult cases. However, since mutation load increases after relapse, this study focused on kids with relapsed or refractory cancer (n=81), or rare cancer (n=21). This study is an expansion of the MiOncoSeq program established in adult patients in 2011 and involved 102 consecutive pediatric cases (mean age 10.6 years; May 2012 to October 2014). Participants underwent integrative clinical exome (tumor and germline DNA; more than 150-fold average coverage) and transcriptome (tumor RNA) sequencing. Results […]