What is the role for "liquid biopsy" for patients with newly diagnosed metastatic NSCLC?

I send ctDNA on essentially every new diagnosis of metastatic lung cancer in my clinic. This is for a few reasons. The major reason is that I find these tests come back in about 7-10d on average, and while we have relatively rapid tissue-based NGS-based testing for actionable biomarkers with our pat...

Liquid biopsy is playing an increasingly important role for patients with non-small cell lung cancer. I send ctDNA for the majority of my metastatic patients at diagnosis. One advantage of liquid biopsy is the rapid turnaround time, as quick as 5-7 days. The turnaround for tissue can be as long as 3...

I use blood/liquid testing when there is not enough tumor tissue available or rebiopsy is not feasible.

I send both concurrently always and as soon as I can.

Reasons why:

1. If I find a target, I can start treatment sooner.
2. Turnaround time is faster than tissue.
3. If tissue turns out not quantity enough, you may be lucky and get your answer from cfDNA, instead of waiting to re-biopsy and re-sending NGS (w...

I think that we are embracing a technology here because it exists, and not because it is relevant or clinically useful. Finding isolated molecular abnormalities on free or even cellular DNA has little to no correlation or association with tumor aggression in situ, as far as my understanding goes.