Molecular staging

increasing understanding of the biology of specific tumor
types and therefore the availability of targeted therapies have prompted
detailed molecular assessment of tumors and alternative biospecimens
not solely for diagnostic purposes however too to assess treatment
strategies additionally. genomic analysis by gene expression
array may be already being used within the treatment of breast cancer,
as an example, and similar strategies are being developed to assess
recurrence or predict response to therapy of lung cancer
patients. potti et al., 105 as an example, studied 89 early stage
nsclc by affymetrix microarray, employing a lung metagene
model to research various gene expression profiles that
predict recurrence. the gene expression information predicted recurrence
higher than clinical information. 105 additional recently, taguchi
et al. 107 in an exceedingly multi-institutional proteomic study discovered
eight distinct mass/charge ratios that identified patients likely
to respond to tyrosine kinase inhibitors (tkis). the features
were not predictive of response to commonplace chemotherapy.
this can be a promising study in that it had been able to show reproducible
results between establishments and suggests that it's going to
not be necessary to directly sample tumor to predict response
to targeted agents. continued progress during this space of investigation
may potentially alter the approach to treatment selection
in lung carcinoma.