Dr. Socinski on Recommendations for Molecular Testing in Lung Cancer

Mark A. Socinski, MD, executive medical director, AdventHealth Cancer Institute, discusses his recommendations for conducting molecular testing in lung cancer.

It is important to conduct comprehensive molecular testing at the time of diagnosis, says Socinski; this is especially important because patients with oncogenic drivers now have several effective targeted therapies available to them and a driver can only be identified through testing.

Both tissue and blood should be tested for oncogenic drivers, according to Socinski. The tests should be used in a complementary fashion, as neither is the gold standard alone. Although 75% to 80% of the time, the findings from tissue and blood tests are concordant, 15% to 20% of the time, something new may be discovered in 1 of the tests, according to Socinski. If the goal is to avoid missing any oncogenic drivers, conducting tissue and plasma biopsies upon lung cancer diagnosis is the best strategy, concludes Socinski.