Molecular Test Identifies Early-Stage Lung Cancer Patients at High Risk of Death After Surgery

Building on their  earlier work reported in The Lancet, UCSF thoracic surgeon Michael Mann, M.D. (left), and  Johannes Kratz, M.D. (right) a former surgical resident in the  Thoracic Oncology Lab, showed they could accurately stratify patients even with the earliest stage of lung cancer into groups at low-, intermediate- or high-risk of death based solely on the activity of 14 different genes found in their tumors. The group analyzed lung  tumors of patients diagnosed as Stage 1A  (T1a node-negative non-small-cell lung cancers (NSCLC)), the earliest stage of the disease. One-quarter (1/4) of these patients will die within 5 years of their operation despite having apparently successful surgery. Current practice guidelines suggests consideration of adjuvant chemotherapy in high-risk stage I tumors, but the guidelines do not aid in the identification of high-risk T1a tumors.