Value of liquid biopsy in taking faster medical decisions in colorectal cancer patients. Its clinical application in an Argentinian cancer institution

Time to take medical decision is very important for cancer patients. In general patients demand and require answers to understand their oncology disease. In the last years genomics has gained an important role to determinate what treatments would receive, that could change the natural history of the patient disease. The introduction of liquid biopsy (LB) to the general practice, help oncologist to take decision faster, helping patients to get their treatment even faster. The objective of this work is to show its utility of LB to shorten time to medical decision in the daily practice of an Argentinean cancer institution.

We compared the time taken to get the result, to make a medical decision and to start an oncology treatment in patients who required a genetic test using LB or histology samples using NGS. Time to results (TTR) defined as day of sending the histology or blood sample to get the medical result; Time to medical decision (TTMD) defined as days since the medical result to the medical consultation; and time to treatment (TTT) defined as time since medical decision to the patient start its treatment provided by their medical insurance.

During 2022 we have realized 89 LB in Colorectal cancer patients (CRC) to determinate RAS pathway mutation or MSI. Also, data was compared with data of 2022 of same determination using histologic samples with NGS. TTR was significantly shorter in the LB compared with the histology sample group, 1.1 days (0.4-1.4 vs 16 (9-19) days respectably (P=>0.0001). TTMD was significantly shorter in the LB group compared to the histology sample group, 1.1 days (0.4-1.4 days) vs 22 days (17 – 29 days) P=>0.0001). TTT was also significantly shorter in the LB group compared to the histology group 8 days (6-14 days) vs 28 days (22-42) respectably P=>0.0001.

From this small sample, we conclude that LB is a simple method, which only requires 10 cc of peripheral blood, is sensitive and specific and easy to implement to determine many genes and mutation status and monitor patients during treatment. This practice may not have an impact in patient survival yet, but definitely may improve the quality of the information to make better and faster medical decisions. And definitely we believe that this could help to improve patients’ quality of life by a better anxiety control, since CRC patient should not have to wait for days or weeks for medical results in order to make a clinical decision.

The authors.

Has not received any funding.

All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.