Post-Treatment Blood Test Offers New Hope for Personalized Cancer Therapy Decisions: Study Finds - Video

A new Yale study has found evidence to support the value of a tool that measures the presence of cancer-derived molecules in the blood of patients with lung cancer years after their treatment.

This tool is a type of molecular residual disease (MRD) detector, which is used after patients have completed their primary treatment in order to monitor their cancer status. Researchers say it could inform clinical intervention, including whether to restart or intensify treatment.

The study findings, published in Nature Medicine were based on patients from the ADAURA clinical trial of the targeted therapy osimertinib for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with epidermal growth factor (EGFR)-activated mutations. The ADAURA trial findings showed a significant benefit in disease-free survival with osimertinib, compared to placebo, making it the recommended standard of treatment for patients up to three years after surgery.

We know patients benefited from osimertinib in the ADAURA trial, but we want to know if they are cured or whether their cancer will come back,” said Dr. Roy Herbst, the study’s first author who is also the assistant dean for translational research at Yale School of Medicine. “MRD detection is a more personalized approach for patients with EGFR mutations in the adjuvant setting [after the primary treatment has completed], and now we're understanding at what point patients start to benefit and how we can more precisely target their therapy.”

If MRD proves valid for clinical purposes it could improve outcomes by identifying high-risk patients who might benefit from intensifying or restarting treatment. Conversely, MRD could also identify patients with low risk of recurrence, possibly sparing them from further treatment and any associated drug toxicities as a result.

Ref: Herbst, R.S., John, T., Grohé, C. et al. Molecular residual disease analysis of adjuvant osimertinib in resected EGFR-mutated stage IB–IIIA non-small-cell lung cancer. Nat Med (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-025-03577-y