Circulating Tumor DNA to Monitor Tumor Response in Lung Cancer Patients Treated with Immunotherapy

A significant minority of lung cancer patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors shows durable responses but no adequate biomarkers are available for predicting which patients will benefit. Immunotherapy is expensive and potentially toxic. Tumor response is monitored by tumor volume using CT scanning. The aim of our study is to assess plasma levels of non-targetable tumor-specific mutations as molecular biomarkers and monitoring tool for durable responses to immunotherapy in advanced NSCLC.

• Decrease in KRAS/BRAF specific ctDNA levels using ddPCR during immunotherapy predicts early and durable tumor response in NSCLC.
• Monitoring of ctDNA during treatment with immunotherapy is a promising approach to predict tumor response.
• Predictive molecular profiling using liquid biopsies is a feasible, less-invasive, and promising new method in Molecular Diagnostics of Lung Cancer.

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About the speaker:
Prof Dr Ed Schuuring
Head of Laboratory for Molecular Pathology, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

The research of Dr Schuuring focuses in the last 3 decades on the identification of prognostic/predictive epigenetic and molecular markers for clinical outcome, response to chemo-radiotherapy, gene-targeted therapy and treatment-resistance in lung, GIST, head&neck cancer, as well as the early detection of cervical cancer in scrapings. More recently his interest expanded to monitoring plasma ctDNA as a bloodborne-based molecular tool to predict response to targeted and immuno-therapy using ddPCR and ctNGS. He is heading the laboratory of Molecular Pathology offering the latest innovative methods for treatment-decision-making in the region North-Netherlands.

Since 1997 he is active in (inter)national committees and advisory boards on implementing Molecular Pathology, the organisation of international proficiency mutation testing in lung tissue biopsies and plasma ctDNA, and co-authored various international guidelines on Molecular Pathology. He graduated in Medical Biology, holds a PhD in Molecular Biology (University of Amsterdam) and is trained as a clinical scientist in Molecular Pathology. He has authored more than 230 publications in leading scientific journals.