I-Corps: A novel gene assay for accurate prognosis and prediction of clinical benefits of chemotherapy for early-stage non-small cell lung cancer

Award ID: 2221895

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of an assay that addresses the high incidence of tumor recurrence in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) at the time of primary tumor surgical resection. The product may become part of the standard of care for stage 1 NSCLC patients at the time of surgical resection of the primary tumor, and be used to identify those at high-risk who would benefit from early implementation of chemotherapy to prevent tumor progression and recurrence. Clinical application of the proposed 7-gene assay may improve patient care and outcomes for those with lung cancer and reduce healthcare costs for the payers resulting from the failure of initial treatment. This I-Corps project is based on the development of a 7-gene marker panel that accurately predicts the risk of recurrence in early-stage NSCLC patients for all histological subtypes. Employing novel artificial intelligence (AI) methods, the assay also predicts the clinical benefits of receiving adjuvant chemotherapy in both proof-of-concept training and validation sample sets. This 7-gene assay may identify high-risk early-stage NSCLC patients following primary tumor resection for cancer recurrence, inform oncologists of the risk of recurrence to improve patient management, and recommend early implementation of platinum-based chemotherapy for high-risk stage 1 NSCLC patients. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Ruth Shuman