Genomic Assay Shows Utility in Selecting NSCLC Patients for Targeted Therapy

The following article features coverage from the IASLC North America Conference on Lung Cancer 2019 meeting. Click here to read more of Cancer Therapy Advisor‘s conference coverage.

Next-generation sequencing of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) can identify patients who would benefit from targeted therapy for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to research presented at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) 2019 North America Conference on Lung Cancer (NACLC 2019) in Chicago.¹

“In our preliminary cohort, an amplicon-based NGS assay using ctDNA for selection of targeted therapy demonstrated clinical utility in routine clinical practice in 23% of patients,” wrote the authors, led by Benjamin Besse, MD, PhD, of Gustave Roussy Institute in France. They added that “up to 29%” of patients showed clinical utility when investigational targeted therapies were included along with approved therapies.

The trial included 489 patients with advanced NSCLC, 125 of whom had not been previously treated for the disease. In the abstract, the authors presented preliminary results from 113 patients. They performed molecular analysis on ctDNA from 89 (82%) of these patients, and found genomic alterations in 78% of them. Thirty-three patients had “actionable mutations” that could be matched with approved or investigational therapies. Another 23 patients had “clinically informative” genomics results. And for 33 patients, the authors wrote that “ctDNA provided clinically actionable results” that could inform targeted therapies.  

Read more of Cancer Therapy Advisor‘s coverage of the IASLC NACLC 2019 meeting by visiting the conference page.

Reference

1. Mezquita L, Planchard D, Dorta M, et al. Clinical utility of CTDNA driver genomic alterations (GA) directing targeted therapy in untreated advanced NSCLC patients. Presented at: International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) 2019 North America Conference on Lung Cancer (NACLC 2019); October 10-12, 2019: Chicago, Illinois. Abstract OA03.08