MRDagent: iterative and adaptive parameter optimization for stable ctDNA-based MRD detection in heterogeneous samples.

Abstract

Motivation: Minimal residual disease (MRD) as critical biomarker for cancer prognosis and management plays a crucial role in improving patient outcomes. However, detecting MRD via next-generation sequencing-based circulating tumor DNA variant calling remains unstable due to the extremely low variant allele frequency and significant inter- and intra-sample heterogeneity. Although parameter optimization can theoretically enhance the detection performance of variants, achieving stable MRD detection remains challenging due to three key factors: (i) the necessity for individualized parameter tuning across numerous heterogeneous genomic intervals within each sample, (ii) the tightly interdependent parameter requirements across different stages of variant detection workflows, and (iii) the limitations of current automated parameter optimization methods.

Results: In this study, we propose MRDagent, a novel variant detection tool designed specifically for MRD detection. MRDagent incorporates an iterative and self-adaptive optimization framework capable of handling unknown objectives, varying constraints, and highly coupled parameters across stages. A key innovation of MRDagent is the integration of a convolutional neural network-based meta-model, trained on historical data to enable rapid parameter prediction. This significantly enhances computational efficiency and generalization performance. Extensive evaluations on simulated and real-world datasets demonstrate MRDagent's superior and stable performance, providing an efficient, reliable solution for MRD detection in clinical and high-throughput research applications.

Availability and implementation: MRDagent is freely available at https://github.com/aAT0047/MRDagent.git. The corresponding dataset and software archive are available at Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15458496.