According to the American Society of Clinical Oncology, around 2.4lac adults in the United States will be diagnosed with lung cancer of which 81% are NSCLC. Early diagnosis and treatment is one of the best indicators for lung cancer survival.
A non randomized clinical trial has been published in JAMA Network Open has revealed that circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) can reduce the treatment time for lung cancer patients. The results of the study has emphasized on the utility of liquid biopsy as a complementary diagnostic tool in lung cancer. In the study, the researchers recruited 150 patients suspected of having advanced NSCLC. All those had evidence of advanced lung cancer using radiologic diagnostic tools. Each of the patients has plasma ctDNA test with next-generation sequencing assay before biopsy. They then had a diagnostic biopsy and tissue NGS. Their clinical trial has found that the use of plasma ctDNA genotyping among patients with advanced NSCLC with accelerated time to treatment in comparison with reference cohort undergoing standard tissue testing.
In this study, the patients assigned to the group had median time to treatment was shorter at 39 days compared to 62 days for the reference cohort. Also, the median turnaround time from sample collection to genotyping results were seven days for accelerate group but 23 days for the reference group.
The findings indicate that the best way to integrate liquid biopsy, based on plasma ctDNA, into the diagnostic algorithm for patients with advanced NSCLC. The team of researchers suggested that complementing standard tissue testing with plasma ctDNA could increase access to precision medicine. The researchers have also cautioned that the impact of this approach on clinically meaningful outcomes needs to be demonstrated.
The information shared in this blog is for educational purposes only.
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