Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is increasingly replacing single gene assays in the screening for therapeutic biomarkers in patients with NSCLC. While NGS has the clear advantage that it can detect all targetable oncogenic driver alterations simultaneously, this technique does come with the risk for a longer turnaround time, in part as a result of the centralized way in which this testing is often organized. However, with a delayed test result, you risk that some patients with a high disease burden miss the opportunity to be treated with a specific targeted therapy, or even die before the NGS result comes in. To mitigate this risk, it may be interesting to adopt a rapid PCR-based testing strategy for selected oncogenic driver mutations in parallel to broad NGS testing.
