Abstract
Christopher Abbosh and Charles Swanton discuss circulating tumor DNA as a potential biomarker for neoadjuvant treatment response in solid tumors.
Highlights
Three studies presented within this special issue of PLOS Medicine focus on evaluation of circulating tumor DNA as a response biomarker in early-stage solid tumours
Like the application of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC), Chauhan and colleagues asked whether evaluation of urinary ctDNA could differentiate pathological response (pCR) from non-pCR in patients being treated with neoadjuvant therapy for muscle invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) [1]
The team identified that ctDNA detection after surgery was a strong predictor of reduced relapse free survival (RFS), with patients who were ctDNA positive following curative therapy exhibiting a 5-year RFS rate of 0% versus 75.6% in ctDNA negative patients. These data highlight the importance of associating ctDNA clearance dynamics during neoadjuvant treatment with post-operative survival endpoints, since in this study ctDNA clearance with neoadjuvant chemotherapy did not translate into reduced risk of disease recurrence following surgery
Summary
Three studies presented within this special issue of PLOS Medicine focus on evaluation of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) as a response biomarker in early-stage solid tumours. Both Yaqi Wang and Pradeep Chauhan and their respective colleagues evaluate ctDNA as a tool capable of predicting complete pathological response (pCR) in locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) and muscle invasive bladder cancer (MIBC), respectively [1,2].
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