肺癌におけるクライオバイオプシー

抄録

With advances in drug therapy, such as molecular targeted drugs and immune checkpoint inhibitors, molecular pathological diagnosis is required to determine the best chemotherapy regimen for patients with advanced lung cancer. There is an increasing number of molecular tests, such as EGFR mutation, ALK rearrangement, ROS1 rearrangement, BRAF V600E mutation, MET exon 14 skipping mutation, and PD-L1 expression tests. To simultaneously perform several molecular pathology tests, well-timed tissue samples of high quality and quantity are required. The newly developed endobronchial ultrasound (EBUS) bronchoscopy, including EBUS-TBNA, EBUS-GS, and EBUS-UT, increases the accuracy of lung cancer diagnosis. Transbronchial lung cryobiopsy (TBLC) is also a promising method that allows for the collection of large samples suitable for molecular pathological diagnosis; however, there is only limited evidence on its use in lung cancer and in Japan. Henceforth, to obtain a large amount of cancer tissue, it will be necessary to select the most suitable diagnostic method among methods such as bronchoscopy, TBLC, and computed tomography–guided percutaneous needle biopsy.