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THURSDAY, Oct. 18, 2018 (HealthDay News) — Integration of plasma next-generation sequencing (NGS) into the routine management of metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) results in an increase in the detection of therapeutically targetable mutations, according to a study published online Oct. 11 in JAMA Oncology<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Charu Aggarwal, M.D., M.P.H., from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, and colleagues conducted a prospective cohort study involving 323 patients with metastatic NSCLC who had plasma testing ordered. A 73-gene commercial platform was used to perform plasma NGS.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that therapeutically targetable mutations were detected in 35 percent of patients in EGFR<\/i>, ALK<\/i>, MET<\/i>, BRCA1<\/i>, ROS1<\/i>, RET<\/i>, ERBB2<\/i>, or BRAF<\/i>. Overall, 29.1 percent of patients had plasma testing only at the discretion of the treating physician or patient preference; 33 percent of these 94 patients had a therapeutically targetable mutation, averting the need for invasive biopsy. Among the remaining 229 patients who had concurrent plasma and tissue NGS or who were unable to have tissue NGS, a therapeutically targetable mutation was detected in tissue alone in 20.5 percent; the addition of plasma testing increased this percentage to 35.8 percent. Most (85.7 percent) of the 42 patients with a targeted therapy based on the plasma result achieved a complete or partial response or stable disease.<\/p>\n
“Given the ease of obtaining plasma-based genotyping and the success observed with such a non-invasive approach, our results argue for incorporation of plasma-based genotyping into routine clinical management of patients with NSCLC,” the authors write.<\/p>\n
Several authors disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.<\/p>\n
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