Use of Liquid Biopsies to Reduce Time to Treatment for Patients With Lung Cancer

At the Great Debates and Updates in Lung Cancer Meeting in New York, New York, Christian Rolfo, MD, PhD, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York, New York, argued that upfront liquid biopsies are an essential part of the initial patient workup.

“With liquid biopsy, we are able to capture more heterogeneity, we have complete information, we have also an opportunity to have baseline information for monitoring liquid biopsy in assessment of the response during the treatment, and the opportunity to capture a lot of information from the very beginning,” cited Dr Rolfo.  

Transcript: 

Hello, my name is Christian Rolfo, I'm a professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. We discussed today in our session about the use of liquid biopsy upfront. I was for the yes, I'm biased because I'm the president of the International Society of Liquid Biopsies, so I need to go in favor of it. 

What is true is that we are trying to reduce the time to access to the treatment for patients. Liquid biopsy can play an important role here in having the results very quickly. We have also some important data already in concordance of liquid and tissue biopsy, so we don't need to go from there, but what is true that reimbursement could be a problem when we are using both technologies at the same time. Here, we need the payers and the insurance to be working together because with liquid biopsy, we are able to capture more heterogeneity, we have complete information, we have also an opportunity to have baseline information for monitoring liquid biopsy in assessment of the response during the treatment, and the opportunity to capture a lot of information from the very beginning. 

My opponent was in pathology, so obviously he will be more in favor of tissue but he raised also important points, like for example cloning of multiple yeses, I think it's something that we will hear more about the prognostic factor or prognostic role of CHIP in the future, and also the needs to distinguish, for example, in patients with small-cell lung cancer, at the moment, we don't have data. In some other histologies, like squamous, we need to remember that there are agnostic biomarkers that could be present in some patients, so the idea to do a complementary approach is very important.

Source: 

Rolfo C. Debate: Should liquid biopsies be part of initial workup? Presented at Great Debates & Updates in Lung Cancer; April 27-28, 2024; New York, NY.