Dr. Nir Peled on Next-Generation Sequencing in Lung Cancer

Nir Peled, MD PhD, senior medical oncologist at the Thoracic Cancer Unit at Davidoff Cancer Center and the head of the research and detection unit for thoracic malignancies at the Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel, discusses next-generation sequencing in lung cancer.

If an oncologist has a clinical suspicion that a patient has a mutation-driven lung cancer, testing should not stop until every possible mutation has been ruled out, says Peled. Next-generation sequencing can be used to identify patients that may respond to targeted therapies.

In a cohort of 100 patients with lung cancer there was a 66% response rate to targeted therapies in those who were positive for targetable mutations by next-generation sequencing. Half of these patients would have otherwise been on chemotherapy if only traditional tests had been used, says Peled. This is a game-changer, he says.

However, there are cost and educational barriers to the full implementation of next-generation sequencing that need to be overcome, says Peled.