Non-Invasive Lung Cancer Test Approved

The Food and Drug Administration approved a non-invasive test Tuesday to help determine which patients have an advanced form of lung cancer that does not respond to therapy.

To be sold under the brand name Verluma, the test is a monoclonal antibody that seeks out a protein found on most small cell lung cancers and attaches itself to those cells.

The antibody is radio labeled, so the cancer cells appear as “hot spots.”

Lung cancer is the nation’s most common malignancy, striking 177,000 Americans a year.

Small cell lung cancer is the least common kind, hitting about 30,000 Americans a year - but virtually all of them die from it.

The question is how advanced their cancer is, because patients with limited disease have about a 20 percent chance of living three years or longer if they’re treated with chemotherapy and radiation together.

But patients whose cancer has spread beyond the lungs have only about a 3 percent chance of survival. - and they get just chemotherapy, because adding expensive and toxic radiation doesn’t help.

Verluma detects tumors in different parts of the body all at once.