Liquid Biopsy and Lung Cancer

2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (6) ◽  
pp. 489-496 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pasquale Pisapia ◽  
Umberto Malapelle ◽  
Giancarlo Troncone

The identification of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients potentially responsive to targeted therapies relies on a number of relevant biomarkers, including EGFR, ALK, ROS-1, and PD-L1. Biomarker identification is most commonly based on surgical sample collection. However, when tissues are difficult to reach or when multiple analyses are necessary to monitor tumor progression and treatment response, liquid biopsy is a valid noninvasive alternative. This analysis, which is preferentially performed on circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) extracted from plasma samples, has the major advantage of reducing the inherent risks and discomfort of tissue biopsy. However, a major disadvantage is that it yields only a low number of ctDNA targets. Thus, to avoid false-positive and false-negative results, it is important to adopt and validate technologies with high sensitivity and specificity in the pre-analytical phase of sampling. This review succinctly addresses the principal methodologies for analyzing plasma-derived ctDNA in NSCLC patients.

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-254
Author(s):  
Pasquale Pisapia ◽  
Francesco Pepe ◽  
Antonino Iaccarino ◽  
Roberta Sgariglia ◽  
Mariantonia Nacchio ◽  
...  

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide. Despite the emergence of highly effective targeted therapies, up to 30% of advanced stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients do not undergo tissue molecular testing because of scarce tissue availability. Liquid biopsy, on the other hand, offers these patients a valuable opportunity to receive the best treatment options in a timely manner. Indeed, besides being much faster and less invasive than conventional tissue-based analysis, it can also yield specific information about the genetic make-up and evolution of patients’ tumors. However, several issues, including lack of standardized protocols for sample collection, processing, and interpretation, still need to be addressed before liquid biopsy can be fully incorporated into routine oncology practice. Here, we reviewed the most important challenges hindering the implementation of liquid biopsy in oncology practice, as well as the great advantages of this approach for the treatment of NSCLC patients.


Author(s):  
Annarita Perillo ◽  
Mohamed Vincenzo Agbaje Olufemi ◽  
Jacopo De Robbio ◽  
Rossella Margherita Mancuso ◽  
Anna Roscigno ◽  
...  

Lung cancer is the most common cancer and the leading cause of cancer mortality worldwide. To date, tissue biopsy has been the gold standard for the diagnosis and the identification of specific molecular mutations, to guide choice of therapy. However, this procedure has several limitations. Liquid biopsy could represent a solution to the intrinsic limits of traditional biopsy. It can detect cancer markers such as circulating tumor DNA or RNA (ctDNA, ctRNA), and circulating tumor cells, in plasma, serum or other biological fluids. This procedure is minimally invasive, reproducible and can be used repeatedly. The main clinical applications of liquid biopsy in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients are the early diagnosis, stratification of the risk of relapse, identification of mutations to guide application of targeted therapy and the evaluation of the minimum residual disease. In this review, the current role of liquid biopsy and associated markers in the management of NSCLC patients was analyzed, with emphasis on ctDNA and CTCs, and radiotherapy.


2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. 9022-9022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben-Yuan Jiang ◽  
Yangsi LI ◽  
Shaokun Chuai ◽  
Zhou Zhang ◽  
Jin-Ji Yang ◽  
...  

9022 Background: In current clinical setting, NSCLC patients harboring specific driver mutation were usually treated guiding by prior profiling of the primary tumor when developed to brain metastasis. Some studies have shown that circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) derived from cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) can reveal unique genomic alterations present in brain malignancies. We assessed CSF as a liquid biopsy media and compared to matched plasma. Methods: We performed capture-based ultra deep sequencing on ctDNA derived from matched CSF, plasma of 40 non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with suspected leptomeningeal carcinomatosis (LC) using a panel consisting of 168 genes. Results: Among the 40 suspected LC cases, 35 were confirmed to have LC, ctDNA in CSF from the 5 non-LC cases are all undetectable. Circulating tumor DNA was detected in 93.8% of CSF and 66.7% of plasma. We compared mutation profiles and identified 86 and 46 SNVs from CSF and plasma, respectively, with 42 SNVs overlapping. Furthermore, ctDNA from CSF revealed many copy number variations (CNVs) that were not detected from plasma (189 CNVs vs. 3 CNVs). The average maximum allelic fraction (AF) of CSF ctDNA is significantly higher than in plasma (56.7% vs. 4.4% p < 10^-6). Twenty-eight patients were pre-treated with EGFR-TKIs and developed subsequent resistance. EGFR T790M and MET amplification were detected in 21% and 39% in CSF, respectively, showing a unique resistance profile among leptomeningeal metastases patients compared to the general population. Interestingly, 60% of CSF samples harbor TP53 loss of heterozygosity, only 11% of which were detected in the matched plasma samples. Such heterogeneity may reflect unique biological themes for brain metastatic tumor sub-clones. Furthermore, 26 patients received molecular targeted therapy based on the results from CSF, and 23 reported alleviation of symptoms at subsequent evaluations. Conclusions: Collectively, our data reveal that ctDNA derived from CSF provides a unique and more comprehensive characterization of genomic alterations of leptomeningeal carcinomatosis than plasma, supporting the importance of CSF as a liquid biopsy media.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jialiang Yang ◽  
Yan Hui ◽  
Yanxiang Zhang ◽  
Minghui Zhang ◽  
Binbin Ji ◽  
...  

BackgroundNon-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is one of the most prevalent causes of cancer-related death worldwide. Recently, there are many important medical advancements on NSCLC, such as therapies based on tyrosine kinase inhibitors and immune checkpoint inhibitors. Most of these therapies require tumor molecular testing for selecting patients who would benefit most from them. As invasive biopsy is highly risky, NSCLC molecular testing based on liquid biopsy has received more and more attention recently.ObjectiveWe aimed to introduce liquid biopsy and its potential clinical applications in NSCLC patients, including cancer diagnosis, treatment plan prioritization, minimal residual disease detection, and dynamic monitoring on the response to cancer treatment.MethodWe reviewed recent studies on circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) testing, which is a minimally invasive approach to identify the presence of tumor-related mutations. In addition, we evaluated potential clinical applications of ctDNA as blood biomarkers for advanced NSCLC patients.ResultsMost studies have indicated that ctDNA testing is critical in diagnosing NSCLC, predicting clinical outcomes, monitoring response to targeted therapies and immunotherapies, and detecting cancer recurrence. Moreover, the changes of ctDNA levels are associated with tumor mutation burden and cancer progression.ConclusionThe ctDNA testing is promising in guiding the therapies on NSCLC patients.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. e14520-e14520
Author(s):  
Rui Lin ◽  
Yue Pu ◽  
Li Mao

e14520 Background: In the era of precision medicine, liquid biopsy analysis is well accepted based on advantages including availability, non-invasiveness, and non-heterogeneity. However, the circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in liquid biopsy is diluted by a large excess of wild-type alleles, which necessitates high sensitivity approach for ctDNA detection. In addition, ctDNA analysis from different liquid biopsy samples need to be evaluated. Methods: We have developed a novel mutant-capture based method, termed PErsonalized Analysis of Cancer (PEAC), for high sensitivity detection of cancer driver mutants at abundance as low as 0.01-0.1% for circulating free DNA (cfDNA) standards. ctDNA samples were extracted from body fluids of lung cancer patients including plasma, pleural effusion and cerebrospinal fluid. EGFR mutants predictive of EGFR tyrosine kinase activity were enriched using PEAC technology, and analyzed using Sanger sequencing. Results: Plasma ctDNA samples B7110003, B7110010, and B7112012 had no or barely detectable L858R mutation, which was enriched to 50-90% after PEAC and readily detected by Sanger. T790M was undetectable before PEAC in plasma sample B7112052 and became 50% after PEAC enrichment. Pleural effusion samples E8106029 and E8111305 had dominated L858R and T790M peaks, respectively, in Sanger chromatograms after PEAC, which was almost to the background levels prior to PEAC. Interestingly, both EGFR L858R and T790M mutants were detected in pleural effusion sample E8106029 after PEAC; the sample was from a patient who had previously treated with an EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), suggestive of resistance developed after target therapy and the utility of PEAC in monitoring patient’s response to EGFR TKI. In addition to enriching point mutations, we also established enrichment of the most frequently occurred EGFR 19 deletion, E746_A750del (c. 2235_2249 del15), which were dominant after PEAC enrichment of ctDNA from plasma samples (B8101186 and B8101241), pleural effusion (E8108088) and cerebrospinal fluid (C8108095); the mutants were undetectable without PEAC enrichment. Conclusions: PEAC technology can enrich ctDNA from body fluids in lung cancer patients and allow detection of low abundant mutants predictive for EGFR TKI therapy. With further validation, the technology may improve current detection methods used in clinical practice.


Cancers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1794
Author(s):  
Alice Indini ◽  
Erika Rijavec ◽  
Francesco Grossi

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) targeting the programmed cell death (PD)-1 protein and its ligand, PD-L1, and cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated antigen (CTLA)-4, have revolutionized the management of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Unfortunately, only a small portion of NSCLC patients respond to these agents. Furthermore, although immunotherapy is usually well tolerated, some patients experience severe immune-related adverse events (irAEs). Liquid biopsy is a non-invasive diagnostic procedure involving the isolation of circulating biomarkers, such as circulating tumor cells (CTC), cell-free DNA (cfDNA), and microRNAs (miRNAs). Thanks to recent advances in technologies, such as next-generation sequencing (NGS) and digital polymerase chain reaction (dPCR), liquid biopsy has become a useful tool to provide baseline information on the tumor, and to monitor response to treatments. This review highlights the potential role of liquid biomarkers in the selection of NSCLC patients who could respond to immunotherapy, and in the identification of patients who are most likely to experience irAEs, in order to guide improvements in care.


Cancers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 2101
Author(s):  
Ângela Carvalho ◽  
Gabriela Ferreira ◽  
Duarte Seixas ◽  
Catarina Guimarães-Teixeira ◽  
Rui Henrique ◽  
...  

Despite the intensive efforts dedicated to cancer diagnosis and treatment, lung cancer (LCa) remains the leading cause of cancer-related mortality, worldwide. The poor survival rate among lung cancer patients commonly results from diagnosis at late-stage, limitations in characterizing tumor heterogeneity and the lack of non-invasive tools for detection of residual disease and early recurrence. Henceforth, research on liquid biopsies has been increasingly devoted to overcoming these major limitations and improving management of LCa patients. Liquid biopsy is an emerging field that has evolved significantly in recent years due its minimally invasive nature and potential to assess various disease biomarkers. Several strategies for characterization of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) have been developed. With the aim of standardizing diagnostic and follow-up practices, microfluidic devices have been introduced to improve biomarkers isolation efficiency and specificity. Nonetheless, implementation of lab-on-a-chip platforms in clinical practice may face some challenges, considering its recent application to liquid biopsies. In this review, recent advances and strategies for the use of liquid biopsies in LCa management are discussed, focusing on high-throughput microfluidic devices applied for CTCs and ctDNA isolation and detection, current clinical validation studies and potential clinical utility.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (23) ◽  
pp. 9083
Author(s):  
Catherine Taylor ◽  
Simi Chacko ◽  
Michelle Davey ◽  
Jacynthe Lacroix ◽  
Alexander MacPherson ◽  
...  

Liquid biopsy is a minimally-invasive diagnostic method that may improve access to molecular profiling for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. Although cell-free DNA (cf-DNA) isolation from plasma is the standard liquid biopsy method for detecting DNA mutations in cancer patients, the sensitivity can be highly variable. Vn96 is a peptide with an affinity for both extracellular vesicles (EVs) and circulating cf-DNA. In this study, we evaluated whether peptide-affinity (PA) precipitation of EVs and cf-DNA from NSCLC patient plasma improves the sensitivity of single nucleotide variants (SNVs) detection and compared observed SNVs with those reported in the matched tissue biopsy. NSCLC patient plasma was subjected to either PA precipitation or cell-free methods and total nucleic acid (TNA) was extracted; SNVs were then detected by next-generation sequencing (NGS). PA led to increased recovery of DNA as well as an improvement in NGS sequencing parameters when compared to cf-TNA. Reduced concordance with tissue was observed in PA-TNA (62%) compared to cf-TNA (81%), mainly due to identification of SNVs in PA-TNA that were not observed in tissue. EGFR mutations were detected in PA-TNA with 83% sensitivity and 100% specificity. In conclusion, PA-TNA may improve the detection limits of low-abundance alleles using NGS.


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