Ignaty Leshchiner: Large-Scale cfDNA Data Reveal How Metastatic Breast Cancer Evolves
Ignaty Leshchiner/ LinkedIn

Ignaty Leshchiner: Large-Scale cfDNA Data Reveal How Metastatic Breast Cancer Evolves

Ignaty Leshchiner, Chief, Division of Computational Oncology and Biostatistics, Yale Cancer Center at Yale University, shared on LinkedIn:

“Our new paper on collaboration with Guardant Health just came out where we analyzed 15,564 plasma cfDNA samples from 12,827 patients with metastatic breast cancer, providing a population-scale view of tumor evolution in the blood biopsy Leshchiner et al. 2026.

Title: Actionable genetic landscape and dynamics in circulating DNA from 12,827 patients with metastatic breast cancer

Authors: Ignaty Leshchiner, Arielle J. Medford, Justin Cha, Lesli A. Kiedrowski, Andrzej Niemierko, Jennifer C. Keenan, Charles S. Dai, Laura M. Spring, Beverly Moy, Seth A. Wander, Neelima Vidula, Steven J. Isakoff, Dejan Juric, Mendy Miller, Andrew A. Davis, Lorenzo Gerratana, Ami Shah, Ben H. Park, Adam Brufsky, Joyce O’Shaughnessy, Rebecca J. Nagy, Leif W. Ellisen, Massimo Cristofanilli, Aditya Bardia, Gad Getz

Read the full article.

We map subtype-specific landscapes of actionable alterations, recurrent resistance in ESR1, PIK3CA, PTEN, AKT1 etc. , show evidence of independently evolving resistant clones, and allelic co-occurrence/exclusivity patterns that emerge only at this scale.

The samples were deeply profiled using the Guardant Health 360 cfDNA assay, allowing us to leverage large-scale real-world clinical genomic testing to reconstruct patterns of tumor heterogeneity, selection, and progression.

We envision this large collection of metastatic breast cancer cfDNA data as an invaluable resource for the design and planning of future clinical trials.”

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Ignaty Leshchiner: Large-Scale cfDNA Data Reveal How Metastatic Breast Cancer Evolves