STUDY Reveals A Biomarker In Liquid Biopsy Can Be Reliable Than Tumour Biopsy
According to Mount Sinai academics, a simple blood test called a liquid biopsy may be able to predict if immunotherapy for lung cancer will work for a patient better than an invasive tumor biopsy technique.
The study, which was published in the journal “Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research,”
The liquid biopsy looks for a protein called PD-L1. This protein helps the immune system fight and eliminate cancer cells. This research found that the blood of patients with lung cancer gave more accurate predictions of the response and survival of those with lung cancer than tissue from biopsies.
The biomarker in the bloodstream, known as extracellular vesicle-derived protein 1 (EV PD-L1), is produced by tumor cells. It might be used to predict which non-small-cell lung cancer patients might benefit from immunotherapy if there is a decrease in PD-L1 in extracellular vesicles in the blood.
Small cell lung cancer: Novel treatments beyond immunotherapy, a great collaboration with @elisagiovan @MarcelloTiseo and team for this overview in new biomarkers at SCLC https://t.co/AxSZlmw0td! @OncoAlert @isliquidbiopsy @lcsmchat @ELS_Oncology pic.twitter.com/WW1UbWiWpY
— Christian Rolfo (@ChristianRolfo) May 24, 2022
“These results will have an impact in the search for biomarkers to predict immunotherapy outcome in patients with lung cancer as no truly reliable biomarkers have been found yet,”
- Dr. Christian Rolfo, a senior author of the study and a Professor of Medicine (Hematology and Medical Oncology) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, an Associate Director for Clinical Research in the Center for Thoracic Oncology at The Tisch Cancer Institute.
- “If validated in larger prospective cohorts of patients, as we are working on now, this protein could complement or substitute for the tissue PD-L1 as the standard of care in these and other types of tumors patients receiving immunotherapy, especially because it is minimally invasive and can be repetitive during treatment, being able to detect changes in the tumour during the treatment in real-time.”
Two groups of patients with non-small-cell lung cancer were studied in a clinical trial. One group received immune-checkpoint inhibitors and the other group received chemotherapy. A control group of patients who received chemotherapy was also included.
We used extracellular vesicles from blood samples to measure the protein expression of PD-L1 in all groups at both time points. Researchers also conducted imaging scans on patients’ tumors before treatment to create a more complete model for immunotherapy response prediction. They used radiomics, an innovative imaging technology that creates a comprehensive picture, to construct a full model for predicting immunotherapy response.
Dr. Rolfo collaborated with radiomics and medical oncologists from the United States, Mexico, and Italy on this research.