9401 – Cell-free DNA Tissues-of-Origin Profiling to Predict Graft versus Host Disease and Detect Infection

Over 30,000 patients undergo hematopoietic cell transplants (HCT) each year for treatment of blood disorders. Up to 50% of patients develop graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). To manage the risk of GVHD, patients receive immunosuppression therapy, putting them at risk of infections. Early GVHD diagnosis, monitoring response to GVHD treatment, and assessing infections are critical for preventing serious complications including organ failure and death. Current clinical methods require confirmation by invasive procedures such as a biopsy of the gut, skin, or liver, while protein marker tests are limited to few tissue types and do not detect infections. Inventors disclose a minimally invasive blood test to simultaneously detect tissue-specific injury and microbial pathogens after HCT. The test utilizes genome-wide profiling of tissue-specific methylation marks within circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA). In a prospective clinical study, the test predicted GVHD within one month of transplant and identified viral and bacterial infections. Aris Despo add74@cornell.edu 607-254-4698