“Liquid biopsies could give an earlier indication of benefit from treatment,” said Dr. Garth Nicholas. “The data from this trial have informed the design of a second trial, currently ongoing, using liquid biopsy to tailor therapy.”A clinical trial published in Nature Medicine suggests that using a “liquid biopsy” to measure tiny bits of tumour DNA in blood could determine if immunotherapy drugs are working in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer. 

This is important because immunotherapy response can take many weeks to become obvious on CT scans, and scans may temporarily look worse before they start to improve.

This study, involving 50 North American patients, showed that patients who responded to immunotherapy as measured by liquid biopsy had a longer duration of cancer control than those who did not (5.0 months progression-free survival vs. 2.6 months).

“Liquid biopsies could give an earlier indication of benefit from treatment,” said Dr. Garth Nicholas who led the study at The Ottawa Hospital. “The data from this trial have informed the design of a second trial, currently ongoing, using liquid biopsy to tailor therapy.”

TOH was the major contributor of patients to this study, which was conducted with the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Centre, the Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG) and other organizations.

See media release and coverage from Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News.

Authors: Anagnostou V, Ho C, Nicholas G, Juergens RA, Sacher A, Fung AS, Wheatley-Price P, Laurie SA, Levy B, Brahmer JR, Balan A, Niknafs N, Avrutin E, Zhu L, Sausen M, Bradbury PA, O'Donnell-Tormey J, Gaudreau PO, Ding K, Dancey J.

Funding: Cancer Research Institute, Mark Foundation for Cancer Research and Personal Genome Diagnostics, Canadian Cancer Society, U.S. National Institutes of Health, Commonwealth Foundation.

The Ottawa Hospital is a leading academic health, research and learning hospital proudly affiliated with the University of Ottawa and supported by The Ottawa Hospital Foundation.