Finley Discusses Researching Biomarkers in Small Cell Lung Cancer
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Gene Finley, MD, discusses his hopes for the small cell lung cancer field and what he hopes research focuses on in coming years.
Gene Finley, MD, medical oncologist at Allegheny Clinic Medical Oncology of Allegheny Health Network (AHN), discusses his hopes for the small cell lung cancer (SCLC) field and what he hopes research focuses on in coming years.
According to Finley, liquid biopsies and bespoke assays are currently being used for patients with colorectal cancer who have early-stage resected disease in order to detect tumor-related DNA as it reappears in the blood.
Due to their effectiveness, one of Finley’s greatest interests is to evaluate biomarkers and see how they can be applied into the SCLC space. Intervention trials are underway and some have been completed that have already shown the benefit of treating patients in an earlier setting. Experts at AHN, including Finley, are eager to further research liquid biopsies for this patient population.
TRANSCRIPTION:
0:08 | My interest is in biomarkers and there's not many well to find biomarkers that are useful in the small cell space, unfortunately. What I do think has some legs is this idea of using a liquid biopsy as a strategy to predict patients that are destined for relapse and then providing an intervention there. We know in colorectal cancer, for example in patients with early-stage resected disease, you can utilize a liquid biopsy or bespoke assays to detect tumor-related DNA as it reappears in the blood. There are many intervention trials that are underway and many that have been completed showing that that does have benefit and that we would expect most oncologists would have predicted that treating patients in an earlier setting is going to have more benefit than waiting until they have a radiographic relapse.
1:16 | Applying that to the small cells setting might help and I think trials like that would be in order. We have a large biomarker biobanking project related to that across all cancer patients that we see at the Allegheny Health Network, so we're very excited about that approach in terms of early-relapse detection and then introduction of therapeutics at a much earlier stage before you have radiographic relapse.
