Clinical utility of NGS in liquid biopsy for lung cancer

Next-generation sequencing can detect multiple driver oncogenes simultaneously, enabling the analysis of limited amounts of biopsied tissue samples. . Druggable driver mutations cover more than 50% of the NSCLC patients. However, treatment options other than molecular targeting drugs have been desired for the remaining half of the populations (driver mutation-negative).The ctDNA dynamics can be evaluated by monitoring changes in ctDNA level in patient follow-up, which is one of the promising biomarkers of liquid biopsy. Many studies of liquid biopsy monitoring and quantifying ctDNA have been conducted to establish a novel approach for prediction of treatment response and monitoring of disease progression, and prediction of prognosis. The Oncomine Lung cfTNA Research Assay is part of a complete solution to detect lung tumor-derived cell-free DNA and RNA (cell-free total nucleic acid; cfTNA) isolated from the plasma fraction of whole blood.