Raez on the Rise of Liquid Biopsy in Lung Cancer

Welcome to Onclive On Air ^™! I’m your host today, Jessica Hergert.

Onclive On Air ^™ is a podcast from OncLive^®, which provides oncology professionals with the resources and information they need to provide the best patient care. In both digital and print formats, OncLive covers every angle of oncology practice, from new technology to treatment advances to important regulatory decisions.

In today’s episode, sponsored by Guardant Health, we had the pleasure of speaking with Luis E. Raez, MD, medical director of Memorial Cancer Institute, and chief of Hematology/Oncology at Memorial Healthcare System, to discuss the evolution of liquid biopsy in lung cancer.

Liquid biopsy continues to gain traction in the field of oncology, augmenting traditional tissue biopsy and broadening the utility of tumor profiling altogether.

In August 2020, the FDA approved Guardant360^® CDx for comprehensive genomic profiling in patients with any solid malignant cancer. The assay is also approved as a companion diagnostic to detect EGFR mutations in patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who could potentially benefit from osimertinib (Tagrisso).

The regulatory decision was based on clinical and analytical data from over 5,000 samples, which provided validation for the test.

Additionally, on October 27, 2020, the FDA approved the FoundationOne Liquid CDx for use as a companion diagnostic for 3 targeted therapies: alpelisib (Piqray) in advanced or metastatic breast cancer, rucaparib (Rubraca) in advanced ovarian cancer, and alectinib (Alecensa) in a specific type of metastatic NSCLC.

The regulatory agency also gave the green light to a label expansion for the diagnostic to report additional select copy number alterations and genomic rearrangements.

In our exclusive interview, Raez provided insight into the advantages and disadvantages of liquid biopsy relative to tissue biopsy and forecasted the utility of liquid biopsy within the field of lung cancer as more of these assays become available.