Dr. Vail Discusses Emerging Advances in Biomarker Testing in Lung Cancer

Eric Vail, MD, director of Molecular Pathology, assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, discusses emerging advances in biomarker testing in lung cancer.

Tumor mutational burden (TMB) shows promise as a prognostic biomarker, as patients with high TMB levels tend to also experience better results with chemotherapy and immunotherapy, Vail explains. Additionally, mutational profiling may become another reliable indicator of optimal patient treatments, although evidence to support this is still emerging, Vail notes.

Overall, developing an accurate immunotherapy biomarker is an important way to guide treatment advances in lung cancer and across other tumor types, Vail says. New, specific biomarkers are still being discovered, but they will be present in increasingly smaller patient populations, Vail concludes.