Comparison of PD-L1 expression between tumor tissues and circulating tumor cells in patients with lung cancer

Current and future applications of liquid biopsy in nonsmall cell lung cancer from early to advanced stages

Liquid biopsy refers to the analysis of any tumour-derived material circulating in the blood or any other body fluid. This concept is particularly relevant in lung cancer as the tumour is often difficult to reach and may need an invasive and potentially harmful procedure. Moreover, the multitude of anticancer drugs and their sequential use underline the importance of conducting an iterative assessment of tumour biology. Liquid biopsies can noninvasively detect any targetable genomic alteration and guide corresponding targeted therapy, in addition to monitoring response to treatment and exploring the genetic changes at resistance, overcoming spatial and temporal heterogeneity.In this article, we review the available data in the field, which suggest the potential of liquid biopsy in the area of lung cancer, with a particular focus on cell-free DNA and circulating tumour cells. We discuss their respective applications in patient selection and monitoring through targeted therapy, as well as immune checkpoint inhibitors. The current data and future applications of liquid biopsy in the early stage setting are also investigated.Liquid biopsy has the potential to help manage nonsmall cell lung cancer throughout all stages of lung cancer: screening, minimal residual disease detection to guide adjuvant treatment, early detection of relapse, systemic treatment initiation and monitoring of response (targeted or immune therapy), and resistance genotyping.

Development of an automated size-based filtration system for isolation of circulating tumor cells in lung cancer patients

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs), defined as tumor cells circulating in the peripheral blood of patients with solid tumors, are relatively rare. Diagnosis using CTCs is expected to help in the decision-making for precision cancer medicine. We have developed an automated microcavity array (MCA) system to detect CTCs based on the differences in size and deformability between tumor cells and normal blood cells. Herein, we evaluated the system using blood samples from non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) patients. To evaluate the recovery of CTCs, preclinical experiments were performed by spiking NSCLC cell lines (NCI-H820, A549, NCI-H23 and NCI-H441) into peripheral whole blood samples from healthy volunteers. The recovery rates were 70% or more in all cell lines. For clinical evaluation, 6 mL of peripheral blood was collected from 50 patients with advanced lung cancer and from 10 healthy donors. Cells recovered on the filter were stained. We defined CTCs as DAPI-positive, cytokeratin-positive, and CD45-negative cells under the fluorescence microscope. The 50 lung cancer patients had a median age of 72 years (range, 48–85 years); 76% had NSCLC and 20% had SCLC, and 14% were at stage III disease whereas 86% were at stage IV. One or more CTCs were detected in 80% of the lung cancer patients (median 2.5). A comparison of the CellSearch system with our MCA system, using the samples from NSCLC patients, confirmed the superiority of our system (median CTC count, 0 versus 11 for CellSearch versus MCA; p = 0.0001, n = 17). The study results suggest that our MCA system has good clinical potential for diagnosing CTCs in lung cancer.