Future perspectives from lung cancer pre-clinical models: new treatments are coming?

Abstract

Towards the sunset of the traditional biopsy era: the future is liquidThe development of personalized medicine for cancer patients relies on the unambiguous identification of the molecular drivers of their disease (1,2). Currently, tumor biopsy samples are the major source of material for biomarker measurement in order to predict response to therapy (3). This approach is biased by at least three different aspects. First, since tumor tissue is unavailable or insufficient for genetic analysis at the time of progression in a significant percentage of advanced NSCLC patients (4), treatment decisions, even in the metastatic setting, are often based on primary tumor biopsies diagnosed years before, frequently leading to treatment failure. Second, serial invasive biopsies to follow tumor progression in space and time are often impractical, uncomfortable and,

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic among patients with lung and head and neck cancer assisted in a public cancer center in Brazil

“…Overall, there was no identification of statistical differences for the clinical stage at the lung cancer group, and it is worth mentioning that over 70% of subjects were metastatic at diagnosis [ 29 ]. The results presented by Lou et al [ 30 ] also demonstrated no change in clinical stage at diagnosis for patients with lung cancer besides a shorter time-to-treatment in 2020 (38.92 days), like what it was found in this research.…”

Fifteen years of precision medicine in the lung cancer management: Perspectives and Challenges

“…Finally, in vitro experiments might represent a novel pre-clinical example of precision medicine. It is already known that circulating tumor cells and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) complement each other on novel approaches regarding tumor heterogeneity, with a potential do predict treatment responses, prognosis 4 , monitoring disease burden 173 , and risk of relapse 174 . In that matter, new pre-clinical in vitro analysis may show that acquired resistance can emerge before the drug exposure occurs, suggesting that some cells are in any case resistant to treatment 4 , yielding an understanding that access tumor's microenvironment in this frontier has the potential to optimize more effective immunology-based precision therapies 4 .…”

“…It is already known that circulating tumor cells and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) complement each other on novel approaches regarding tumor heterogeneity, with a potential do predict treatment responses, prognosis 4 , monitoring disease burden 173 , and risk of relapse 174 . In that matter, new pre-clinical in vitro analysis may show that acquired resistance can emerge before the drug exposure occurs, suggesting that some cells are in any case resistant to treatment 4 , yielding an understanding that access tumor's microenvironment in this frontier has the potential to optimize more effective immunology-based precision therapies 4 . In sum, there is hope the optimal use of AI will move precision oncology to a new paradigm with a more efficient journey from biomarker identification and validation, trial design, drug approval and ultimately better and more affordable patient tailored treatments.…”

“…Despite not being the most incident, lung cancer remains the deadliest cancer worldwide, accounting for 18% of all cancer deaths in 2020 3 . Several factors contribute to this high mortality, such as the advanced age at diagnosis, high frequency of comorbidities and especially late diagnosis 4 , which is still observed in majority of cases, despite advances in diagnosis, screening 5 and anti-tobacco laws 6 .…”

Molecular Profiling of Circulating Tumour Cells and Circulating Tumour DNA: Complementary Insights from a Single Blood Sample Utilising the Parsortix® System

“…This intertumoral and intratumoral heterogeneity of cancer as a basis for tumour evolution, treatment resistance and subsequent treatment failure, is an area of growing understanding [3]. Recent advances in high-throughput, relatively low-cost sequencing techniques (for example, next generation sequencing (NGS)) have shed light on molecular drivers of cancer, actionable mutations and the continuous process of clonal evolution from selective pressure of cancer therapies [4]. As such, it is widely accepted that personalised or precision medicine will optimise response to cancer therapy and improve quality of life for the patient.…”