Abstract 2213: Longitudinal tracking of circulating rare events in the liquid biopsy of stage III-IV NSCLC patients during treatment

• Published in: Cancer research (Chicago, Ill.) Ill.), 2023-04, Vol.83 (7_Supplement), p.2213-2213
• Main Authors: Bai, Lily, Courcoubetis, George, Nieva, Jorge, Mason, Jeremy, Kuhn, Peter, Shishido, Stephanie
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1538-7445; 1538-7445
• DOI: 10.1158/1538-7445.AM2023-2213

Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related death in the United States. Non Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) is the most prevalent subtype of lung cancer diagnoses, with significantly worse survival rates as clinical staging progresses. The purpose of this study was to determine the prognostic utility of longitudinal peripheral liquid biopsy as a treatment monitoring tool in stage III-IV NSCLC patients throughout treatment. Liquid biopsy represents a way for physicians to non-invasively continuously monitor and understand tumor progression through analyzing serial patient blood samples. This allows for real-time, in depth analysis of patient status throughout the treatment process. This study used the third generation, enrichment-free High-Definition Single Cell Assay (HDSCA3.0) workflow to detect and characterize rare events in the 48 peripheral blood samples collected from a cohort of 10 stage III-IV NSCLC patients undergoing various treatments. This workflow uses 4 fluorescent channels corresponding to 5 biomarkers. While circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have been shown to be effective as a prognostic tool for measuring treatment efficacy and patient response to treatment, we have additionally identified 6 additional rare cell phenotypes with variable cytokeratin expression, and 3 types of oncosomes. We have established a liquid biopsy profile that is unique to NSCLC as compared to 50 normal donors. Within this cohort, we found significantly higher amounts of rare cells and oncosomes in patient cohorts as compared to normal donors, highlighting the potential utility of both cellular and oncosome subtypes in disease monitoring. In addition, these rare events differ drastically in morphological parameters and channel expression, and also display temporal heterogeneity. Through the analysis of peripheral blood samples across time and treatment methodologies, we observed significant association between liquid biopsy analytes and progression-free and overall survival, supporting the utility of liquid biopsy as a clinical tool. Understanding the dynamics behind these rare groups throughout the courses of treatment may help improve prognostic utility of liquid biopsy. Citation Format: Lily Bai, George Courcoubetis, Jorge Nieva, Jeremy Mason, Peter Kuhn, Stephanie Shishido. Longitudinal tracking of circulating rare events in the liquid biopsy of stage III-IV NSCLC patients during treatment [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cance