Funding for the Lung Health Hub is provided by AstraZeneca. All content is developed independently by Outcomes4Me; AstraZeneca has no influence on the content of the site.
After discovering a lung nodule, the next step is often a biopsy to determine if it’s cancer. Before your biopsy, it’s important to ask your care team about biomarker testing. Biomarker testing helps your care team understand which treatments are most likely to work for you and which may be less effective, or not effective at all, if the biopsy indicates that cancer is present.
Biomarker testing is most commonly done with a biopsy. If there isn’t enough tissue, sometimes a blood-based “liquid biopsy” can be used instead.
Hear from Dr. Jessica Lin of Massachusetts General Hospital and Dr. Martin Dietrich of the University of Central Florida on why biomarker testing is so important in lung cancer care. They explain how understanding the biology of each patient’s cancer can guide more personalized treatments.
Transcript:
The following questions and responses have been lightly edited for grammatical purposes.
What is biomarker testing?
Dr. Jessica Lin: If we take a step back, it’s really important to understand that lung cancer is not just one disease. Not every lung cancer is the same. In fact, lung cancer is very much a heterogeneous illness made up of many different subtypes, each with distinct characteristics and biology.
When we talk about biomarker testing, we’re referring to testing a patient’s specific lung cancer for the presence or absence of alterations in certain genes, or the level of expression of specific proteins. These markers help us better understand the cancer’s biology and guide us toward the most effective treatment. Biomarker testing has truly become an essential part of both the initial diagnosis of lung cancer and treatment decision-making.
We often say that lung cancer is a prime example of how precision medicine works in cancer care. Many of the lessons we’ve learned through precision medicine in lung cancer are now being applied to other types of cancer as well.
Personalized treatment means we match how we treat patients with non-small cell lung cancer to what we know about the specific biology of their cancer, based on biomarker testing. In other words, we’re tailoring treatment to the biomarker identified in that patient’s cancer.
Should every patient undergo biomarker testing?
Dr. Martin Dietrich: The answer is absolutely yes. If biomarker testing hasn’t been done, that’s a major missing piece of information. Most of what we know about lung cancer genetics actually comes from studying patients with stage IV disease.
But what we’ve realized is that biology isn’t stage-dependent. The insights we’ve gained in stage IV apply just as well to stage III, stage II, and even stage I—any time systemic therapy is needed. These genetic markers guide us toward the best treatment options.
So yes, biomarker testing needs to be a top priority. It’s just as critical for a patient with stage II lung cancer as it is for someone with stage IV. Every patient deserves comprehensive genetic testing that looks broadly across the entire range of possible genetic abnormalities.
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