Dr. Goldman on the Impact of Liquid Biopsies in Lung Cancer

Jonathan W. Goldman, MD, health sciences clinical instructor, Department of Medicine, and Hematology/Oncology member, Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center Signal Transduction and Therapeutics Program, UCLA, discusses the impact of liquid biopsies in lung cancer.

Liquid biopsies have reduced the amount of time it takes to perform a biopsy and match patients with appropriate therapy, explains Goldman. If patients don't have tissue results when they come in for their initial evaluation, a blood test can provide potentially actionable results within a week. Additionally, blood tests are performed with next-generation sequencing, which accounts for 70 or more mutations at a time.

Currently, liquid biopsies are not as sensitive as standard tissue tests, says Goldman. While there is concern for false negatives with liquid biopsies, a positive result is a dependable result. Apart from diagnosis, liquid biopsies could also be used to assess resistance mutations, concludes Goldman.