Liquid biopsies to distinguish malignant from benign pulmonary nodules

Over the past decades, low‐dose computed tomography (LD‐CT) screening has been widely used for the early detection of lung cancer. Increasing numbers of indeterminate pulmonary nodules are now being discovered. However, it remains challenging to distinguish malignant from benign pulmonary nodules, especially those considered to be small or ground‐glass (GGN) nodules. Liquid biopsies have been successfully applied in the diagnosis of advanced lung cancer, and the potential value for early detection of lung cancer has made great progress. Recent studies have demonstrated the value of various blood‐based tumor biomarkers in determining the nature of pulmonary nodules, including cell‐free DNA (cfDNA), microRNAs (miRNAs), circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and tumor‐associated autoantibodies (AAbs). In this review, we summarize the latest progress of liquid biopsies, and their potential applications and challenges in the diagnosis of malignant pulmonary nodules.

• Publication year

  2021

• Venue

  Thoracic Cancer

• Publication date

  2021-05-07

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1111/1759-7714.13982PMID 33960710PMCID 8169297
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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