Dr. Diehn on Next Steps With Liquid Biopsies in Lung Cancer

Maximilian Diehn, MD, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology, Stanford Medicine, discusses some of the next steps researchers are taking with liquid biopsies in the field of lung cancer.

Clinical studies need to be done that prove utility of applying liquid assays, so they can become part of the standard of care, Diehn explains. One of the exciting, but also challenging, aspects of this field is that there are so many potential applications. However, if researchers want any 1 of them to be the standard of care, a study will need to be conducted to show that it makes a difference to patient outcomes.

Something else that the field is interested in regarding liquid biopsies is the detection of minimal residual disease (MRD). For patients who have had surgery for early-stage lung cancer, a fraction of them will eventually recur, even if their scans are clear following surgery. With an assay developed in Diehn's lab, researchers can detect which patients have these microscopic cells left. In the long-term, it could help determine which patients might need additional systemic treatment after surgery, he concludes.