Liquid biopsy in early stage lung cancer

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the world, accounting for ≈27% of all cancer-related deaths. It is also the second most diagnosed cancer type (after prostate and breast cancer), with an incidence rate of over 14% in both genders, and over 224,390 new cases and 158,080 deaths are expected to occur in the United States in 2016 (1). Among the two main histological types of lung cancer, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has the highest incidence, representing 80–85% of all lung cancer cases and being mostly locally advanced or metastatic at the time of diagnosis, according to the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) (2-4)