Instead of invasive and discomforting tissue biopsies, the examination of the stage of cancer directly using the blood sample is the most innovative and promising technology today, which is termed as the liquid biopsy. US FDA has approved one such detection test for metastatic non-small cell lung cancer on June, 16. Testing for EGFR Mutation Test v2 in cell-free DNA from plasma using the PCR-based mutation with a short turnaround time of 90 minutes, has been approved by the US-FDA to identify patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) eligible for treatment with the EGFR- targeted therapeutic erlotinib.
The test detects specific alterations in the gene epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR): exon 19 deletions or exon 21 (L858R) substitution mutations. These mutations are present in about 10 to 20 percent of NSCLCs, the most common type of lung cancer. Cell-free DNA is…
