Impact of Chemotherapy on the Somatic Mutation Burden of Sperm and Other Tissues

We applied high-fidelity duplex sequencing to 94 samples from 36 individuals exposed to diverse chemotherapies along with 32 controls. We found that in many of the sperm samples from men exposed to chemotherapy, the somatic mutation burden was elevated compared to controls as well as the expected burden based on trio studies. We then validated this finding using other tissues, and also found increased somatic mutation burden in the blood and liver of many subjects exposed to chemotherapy compared to unexposed controls.