The Association for Molecular Pathology announced the publication of best practice recommendations for clinical laboratories developing and performing homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) testing.
The manuscript, titled “Recommendations for Clinical Molecular Laboratories for Detection of Homologous Recombination Deficiency in Cancer: A Joint Consensus Recommendation of the Association of Molecular Pathology, Association of Cancer Care Centers and College of American Pathologists,” was published online ahead of print, and the full text is freely available in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics.
To develop these recommendations, AMP’s Clinical Practice Committee assembled an expert panel to review current practices and assess the medical literature related to the molecular detection of HRD in clinical settings. The AMP Detection of HRD in Cancer Working Group included organizational representation from the Association of Community Cancer Centers, the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the College of American Pathologists.
Alanna J. Church, M.D., is the chair of AMP’s 2025 Clinical Practice Committee and associate director of the Laboratory for Molecular Pediatric Pathology at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer Center. “As part of our assessment, we identified considerable variability in many aspects of HRD testing, including sample requirements, tumor types, molecular methodologies and the biomarkers evaluated,” said Church. “This new report offers evidence-based recommendations for HRD diagnostic assays to help improve standardization, transparency, quality across laboratories and care for our cancer patients.”
The AMP HRD Working Group developed 12 recommendations focused on the design and validation of HRD assays. These guidelines are based on survey data, a review of more than 4,300 peer-reviewed scientific publications, professional experience and consensus of the subject matter experts. The recommendations address technical aspects of genomic instability and HRD analysis, including interpretation of genomic scars from tumor and germline next-generation sequencing results and the clinical relevance of HRD biomarkers.
To read the full manuscript, please visit www.jmdjournal.org/article/S1525-1578(25)00136-9/fulltext.
