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Northwestern Medicine scientists and collaborators have demonstrated a novel liquid biopsy technique that can measure cancer burden and reveal molecular characteristics of small cell lung cancer (SCLC), according to a new study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

The new approach could eventually allow clinicians to monitor how the disease changes during treatment through a simple blood test, according to the study's senior author Anish Thomas, M.D., the Roswell Park Professor of Hematology and Oncology.

"Although SCLC has historically been treated largely as a single disease, we now recognize that there are important biological differences between tumors," said Thomas, also a member of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University. "Understanding these differences is essential to developing more effective treatments."

Small cell lung cancer accounts for roughly 15% of lung cancer cases, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and is marked by rapid growth, early spread and poor survival outcomes. Although scientists have identified molecular subtypes of the cancer with distinct biological characteristics, obtaining enough tumor tissue for molecular testing has remained a persistent challenge.

, and his research group at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who pioneered a technique called cell-free chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (cfChIP-seq). Investigators demonstrated that cfChIP-seq could identify key gene-expression features of SCLC using as little as 1 milliliter of blood.

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