Louise Bach Callesen, MD, PhD at Aarhus University Hospital, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Do methylation- and mutation-based ddPCR assays provide overlapping or complementary information for MRD detection?
Today I had the pleasure of presenting our OPTIMISE poster at ESMOGI2026.
In this methodological analysis within the OPTIMISE trial, we compared two tumor-agnostic ddPCR-based ctDNA approaches for MRD detection in oligometastatic colorectal cancer: an NPY methylation-based assay and a KRAS/NRAS/BRAF mutation-based assay.
Across 231 plasma samples from 50 patients, the two assays showed high overall concordance, but also some discordance. The NPY methylation-based assay detected more ctDNA-positive samples, while the mutation-based assay provided limited additional clinical information and included findings suggestive of potential CHIPs.
Overall, these findings did not support continued dual-assay testing in OPTIMISE, and the NPY methylation assay was selected for continued use in the trial.
Thank you to everyone who stopped by the poster for interesting discussions on ctDNA-MRD, assay selection, and ctDNA-guided follow-up after local therapy in oligometastatic colorectal cancer.
Very grateful to all co-authors and collaborators for making this work possible.”
More posts about ESMOGI2026.