Molecular Genetic Testing and Liquid Biopsy in Lung Cancer: Present and Future

The genetic landscape of lung cancer has been expanded over decades with advancements in molecular genetic technologies. Despite improvements, the survival rate of lung cancer is still low. When diagnosed at an early stage, resection of tumor or lobectomy is possible, survival rate increases accordingly. Therefore it is crucial to identify diagnostic or predictive biomarkers and develop new technologies which can efficiently analyze these biomarkers. Since lung tumor tissue is difficult for sampling and requires invasive procedures, identification of non-invasive blood-based tumor biomarkers has become attractive recently. This review will summarize clinically significant key genetic biomarkers and focus on liquid biopsy which means analyzing of noninvasive biomarkers such as circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), circulating tumor cells (CTCs), circulating miRNAs and exosomes.