WCLC 2019: Blood Biomarker–Based Lung Cancer Screening
Posted: Monday, October 7, 2019
According to results presented at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) 2019 World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC) in Barcelona (Abstract PL02.03), the novel autoantibody diagnostic EarlyCDT–Lung Test may lead to a significant decrease in late-stage diagnosis of lung cancer in at-risk patients who also underwent computed tomography (CT) imaging. The Scottish study also suggested the test may decrease all-cause and lung cancer–specific mortality rates among patients, observed Frank Sullivan, PhD, and Stuart Schembri, MD, both of the University of Saint Andrews, Scotland.
“Blood-based biomarker panels, such as the EarlyCDT–Lung Test, may have an important role in future lung cancer screening programs,” the authors concluded. “Further studies including ones to establish the ideal testing frequency are required.”
In this randomized study, the investigators assigned 12,208 patients who had a high risk of developing lung cancer to either the study intervention or standard practice in the United Kingdom. The authors identified 127 cases of lung cancer, with 56 cases in the intervention group and 71 in the control group. Of the patients in the intervention group, 9.8% experienced a positive EarlyCDT–Lung Test result, with 18 patients (3.4%) diagnosed with lung cancer during the study period.
The investigators found that fewer patients in the intervention cohort were diagnosed with stage III or IV lung cancer, compared with those in the control group (33% vs. 52%, respectively), and that the rate of late-stage cancer diagnosis in the intervention group was also lower (58.9% vs. 73.2%). Drs. Sullivan and Schembri noted that although the study was not powered to detect a difference in mortality after 2 years, they observed a nonsignificant trend of fewer deaths among patients in the intervention group than in the control group (87 deaths vs. 108 deaths, respectively). Similar results were also reported regarding lung cancer–specific mortality (17 vs. 24).
Disclosure: The study authors’ disclosure information may be found at wclc2019.iaslc.org.
