ESMO Releases Guidelines for Liquid Biopsy Testing in Cancer Patients

Developed by the society’s Precision Medicine Working Group and published in the ESMO journal Annals of Oncology, the new recommendations endorse liquid biopsies as a standard of care for genotyping and treatment selection for many patients with advanced cancer.

Tests that are validated and properly sensitive “may be used in routine clinical practice, provided the limitations of the assays are taken into account,” the authors wrote. According to the group, tissue-based testing should remain a first choice for many, due to limitations of ctDNA assays in detecting fusion events and copy number changes. However, ctDNA assays become preferable when faster results will be clinically important or when tissue biopsies are either inappropriate or impossible.

For oncologists, ESMO said the choice between PCR and NGS assays should be defined by availability, reimbursement status, and the number of “tier I actionable genetic aberrations” for each individual tumor type.