Researchers Propose Adding a Molecular Classifier to TNM Staging in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

“Looking at the genomic aspect of tumors allows us to get deeper than just looking at the microscopic appearance of the tumor and see how aggressive they are biologically,” said Johannes Kratz, MD, FACS, director of minimally invasive and robotic thoracic surgery at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and coauthor of the study that was published in December 2019 in JAMA Network Open. “We can make a more accurate prediction of which patients will recur and better predict survival.”

Dr Kratz said that incorporating molecular analyses to determine patients’ prognoses helps address a problem unique among this cancer population: why one-third experience recurrence after surgery to remove their tumors. “When you compare our recurrence rates with other solid tumors, there’s something biologically different with lung cancer. We have the worst outcomes for surgically-resected diseases because these tumors are deadly,” he said.