Lung Adenocarcinoma Plasma Mutation Profiling

Written informed consent was obtained from all patients under a protocol approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Maryland, Baltimore. The project identification code is 27681. The protocol was approved on 25 August 2006. Plasma samples were obtained from 25 patients who were diagnosed with lung adenocarcinoma. EDTA-anticoagulant blood samples were collected at the time of the interview by venipuncture from the consented subjects as previously described [11 (link)]. The samples were centrifuged at 750× g for 10 min, and the plasma fractions were stored at −80 °C [11 (link)]. We also obtained plasma samples of three NSCLC patients from Tissue Solutions (Glasgow, UK). EGFR mutations of the lung cancer patients were determined in their tumor tissues by the Qiagen RGQ PCR with the Rotor-Gene^® Q 5plex HRM^® instrument (Qiagen) in clinical laboratories. Plasma samples collected from 20 age- and gender-matched cancer-free smokers were used as controls to determine the cut-off level of mutation allele frequency.