Clinical Value of MRD Monitoring for Adjuvant Therapy in Postoperative NSCLC

Minimal residual disease (MRD) refers to the small number of malignant cells that remain after curative treatments (curative intent surgical resection, radiotherapy, and/or chemotherapy). MRD is common in patients with blood cancer, and is known to be associated with recurrence and poor prognosis. Recent studies also reported that MRD-negative in postoperative solid tumors such as colorectal/colon cancer and breast cancer is associated with better survival outcomes. However, the clinical values of MRD monitoring for adjuvant therapy in postoperative NSCLC remain inadequate. Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), a type of cell-free DNA, refers to the DNA fragments that are derived from tumor cells and circulate in the blood. Recently, next-generation sequencing (NGS) was successfully applied to monitor NPM1, RUNX1 and FLT3 mutations in multiple myeloma. Thus, NGS technique is a promising tool for sensitive MRD monitoring, which provides the ctDNA profiling from MRD, and then provides future decision-making treatment for postoperative NSCLC patients. Thus, this clinical study aims to monitor the ctDNA status of MRD, and to explore the clinical value of MRD monitoring in decision-making adjuvant therapy for patients with stage IB-IIA NSCLC after curative surgery. A total of 150 patients with primary curable stage IB-IIA NSCLC will be recruited in this clinical trial. The following samples will be collected from each patient including 1) preoperative blood samples; 2) surgical tissue samples; 3) blood samples 3-7 days after surgery; 4) blood samples every 3-6 month during adjuvant chemotherapy; and 5) white blood control samples. In addition, demographic and tumor characteristics of the patients will be collected for subsequent analysis, including age, sex, tumor stage, pathological stage, disease couse time, PS score, etc. NGS will be used to analyze the whole exons of potential driver genes to obtain the MRD status. Statistical analyses will be performed to analyze the survival outcomes of MRD-positive and MRD-negative group and to explore the clinical value of MRD monitoring for adjuvant therapy in postoperative NSCLC.