TERTmonitor Efficacy and Performance in Detecting Mutations by Droplet Digital PCR.

Background: The screening of TERT promoter (TERTp) mutations is essential in cancer research and diagnostics, due to its prevalence in tumours associated with low self-renewal rates. TERTmonitor is a diagnosis kit primarily designed for real-time qPCR qualitative detection of -124C>T and -146C>T TERTp mutations, which are highly prevalent in several malignancies, particularly in bladder carcinoma.

Objective: This study aims to investigate TERTmonitor performance in droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) in urine samples from bladder cancer patients.

Methods: A total of 45 urine samples were examined by real-time qPCR and ddPCR techniques, and their performances were compared.

Results: TERTmonitor had similar performance in both real-time qPCR and ddPCR platforms. Specifically, the methods exhibited a concordance rate of 95.45% and 90% for -124C>T and -146C>T mutations, respectively. Importantly, an enhanced sensitivity in certain scenarios was exhibited by ddPCR when compared to real-time qPCR, detecting mutations that the latter failed to identify in approximately 4.55% and 10% of the samples for -124C>T and -146C>T mutations, respectively. This enhanced sensitivity of ddPCR was particularly evident in samples with low-frequency mutations.

Conclusions: The findings highlight the usefulness of TERTmonitor for cancer surveillance either in real-time qPCR or ddPCR platforms.