Assessment of serum tumor markers CEA, CA-125, and CA19-9 as adjuncts in non-small cell lung cancer management

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

// Scott Strum 1 , 2 , Mark Vincent 1 , 2 , Meghan Gipson 3 , Eric McArthur 2 and Daniel Breadner 1 , 2 1 Department of Oncology, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, London, ON, Canada 2 London Regional Cancer Program at London Health Sciences Centre, London, ON, Canada 3 Department of Medicine, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland Correspondence to: Daniel Breadner, email: daniel.breadner@lhsc.on.ca Keywords: tumor marker; biomarker; lung cancer; NSCLC; translational research Received: December 07, 2023 Accepted: February 22, 2024 Published: June 13, 2024 Copyright: © 2024 Strum et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. ABSTRACT Conventional tumor markers may serve as adjuncts in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) management. This study analyzed whether three tumor markers (CEA, CA19-9, and CA-125) held associations with radiographic and clinical outcomes in NSCLC. It constituted a single-center study of NSCLC patients treated with systemic therapy at the London Regional Cancer Program. Serum tumor markers were analyzed for differences in radiographic responses (RECIST v1.1 or iRECIST), associations with clinical characteristics, and all-cause mortality. A total of 533 NSCLC patients were screened, of which 165 met inclusion criteria. A subset of 92 patients had paired tumor markers and radiographic scans. From the latter population, median (IQR) fold-change from nadir to progression was 2.13 (IQR 1.24–3.02; p < 0.001) for CEA, 1.46 (IQR 1.13–2.18; p < 0.001) for CA19-9, and 1.53 (IQR 0.96–2.12; p < 0.001) for CA-125. Median (IQR) fold-change from baseline to radiographic response was 0.50 (IQR 0.27, 0.95; p < 0.001) for CEA, 1.08 (IQR 0.74, 1.61; p = 0.99) for CA19-9, and 0.47 (IQR 0.18, 1.26; p = 0.008) for CA-125. In conclusion, tumor markers are positioned to be used as adjunct tools in clinical decision making, especially for their associations with radiographic response (CEA/CA-125) or progression (CEA/CA-125/CA-19-9).