Real-World Data Study Examines the Past Decade of Biomarker Testing for Lung Cancer

May 9, 2023

A real-world data study presented at this year’s ISPOR meeting showed that biomarker testing for early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) increased steadily over the past ten years. Data from over one thousand patients with early-stage NSCLC from 2011 to 2021, finding that 74.1% of patients had biomarker testing performed within the first six months after being diagnosed with the disease.

According to Conor Killmurray, “The majority of patients were 65-years-old or older, with 91.8% being white and 81.4% had a history of tobacco use. The most common testing method was the use of Sanger sequencing for patients’ disease with an EGFR mutation (n = 244), fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) for ALK (n = 464) and ROS1 (n = 357), while immunohistochemistry was used to identify the level of PD-L1 (n = 450), and next generation sequencing was used for the remaining mutations. The most frequent biomarkers that appeared in testing were EGFR (64%), ALK (60%), PD-L1 (48%), ROS1 (46%), BRAF (40%), MET (35%), KRAS (29%), RET (22%), HER2 (21%), and PIK3CA (20%). These biomarkers also make up some of the most common biomarkers, along with neurotrophic tropomyosin kinase receptors (NTRK), found for patients with adenocarcinoma, which is a subtype of NSCLC.”

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