A Prospective Study of Plasma Genotyping as a Noninvasive Biomarker for Genotype-directed Cancer Care

Description

Tumor genotyping has become an essential biomarker for the care of advanced lung cancer and melanoma, and is currently used to identify patients for treatment with targeted kinase inhibitors like erlotinib and vemurafenib. However, tumor genotyping can be slow and cumbersome, and is limited by availability of tumor biopsy tissue for testing. The aim of this study is to prospectively evaluate a blood-based genotyping tool that can quantify the presence of oncogenic mutations (EGFR, KRAS, BRAF) in patients with lung cancer and melanoma. This assay is being studied both as a diagnostic tool for classifying patient genotype, and a serial measurement tool for quantification of response and progression on therapy.