BackTable Tumor Board: Lung Cancer Staging, Colorectal Cancer

The BackTable podcast network recently featured Cedars-Sinai Cancer specialists Karen Reckamp, MD, a thoracic medical oncologist and director of the Division of Medical Oncology, and Jun Gong, MD, medical director of Colorectal Cancer, on its Tumor Board podcast.

Both experts, who were featured in separate episodes, discussed liquid biopsy. This type of test looks for small fragments of DNA shed by cancer cells—circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA)—in the patient’s blood.

“We use liquid biopsy a lot,” Reckamp told BackTable, noting that there are at least 10 biomarkers in the blood that help oncologists determine the best treatments for lung cancer patients. “We're using those to think about prognosis, to look at the biology, to help understand whether we need to change systemic therapies, and whether there are new targeted therapies that are available.”

Gong discussed colorectal cancer studies presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology conference in October, including two that focused on liquid biopsy and ctDNA. He noted that monitoring colorectal cancer patients for ctDNA is gaining in popularity but is not yet part of established guidelines for directing treatment.  

“For now, I tend to use it on a case-by-case basis,” Gong told BackTable. “It's really with high-risk stage 2 or stage 3 patients that we discuss the option of circulating tumor DNA, but with the caveat that patients understand that this is really prognostic right now, and we don't have a high-level, established guideline for what to do with these results.”

Listen to the complete episodes featuring Reckamp and Gong on BackTable.