Trial Information

Biomarker Discovery and Validation in Lung Cancer

The primary objective of this study is to discover and validate molecular biomarkers for
lung cancer.

Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death in industrialized countries. Most
patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) present with advanced disease, and despite
recent advances in multi-modality therapy, the overall 10-year survival rate is less than
10%. A significant minority of patients (25−30%) with NSCLC have stage I disease and
receive surgical intervention alone. Although 35−50% of patients with stage I disease will
relapse within 5 years, it is not currently possible to identify specific high-risk
patients. In addition, for patients with metastatic disease, standard chemotherapeutic
approaches result in less than 50% response rate, meaning that more than half of patients do
not benefit and only suffer from side effects.

Only very limited data exists on markers capable of predicting response to chemotherapy.

This population would certainly also benefit from more of those markers. Another situation
where a biomarker could be potentially very useful is the situation where a pulmonary nodule
is diagnosed and has to be characterized. In this situation a biomarker could predict
whether the nodule is or is not cancerous and thus, make CT Scan follow up unnecessary.