There is a critical need to identify MRD to determine which patients benefit from checkpoint inhibitor therapy and to optimize and personalize the duration of consolidation Durvalumab. The long-term goal is to incorporate ctDNA analysis into clinical practice to individualize therapy in patients with stage III NSCLC by moving to a treatment-by-marker based approach (as opposed to treatment based on clinical or radiographic evidence of disease). This approach may spare a subset of patients from treatment with unnecessarily excessive cycles of consolidation immunotherapy if they are already cured with CRT alone and individualize the duration of consolidation immunotherapy in patients not cured with CRT. The study team also seek to identify early in the treatment course, patients who are destined not to be cured with consolidation immunotherapy so that alternative strategies can be tested when tumor burden is low.
This research aims to incorporate ctDNA analysis into clinical practice to individualize therapy in patients with stage III NSCLC by moving to a treatment-by-marker based approach (as opposed to treatment based on clinical or radiographic evidence of disease).