Guidelines Spotlight: ESMO urge NGS testing for additional advanced cancers

ESMO updated its recommendations for NGS in advanced cancers this year, urging broader use of NGS in additional cancer types and the inclusion of tumor-agnostic biomarkers.

The ESMO Precision Medicine Working Group (PMWG) first published its recommendations for when to use next-generation sequencing (NGS) in routine practice for patients with metastatic cancers in 2020¹. At that time, based on identification of recurrent genomic alterations in the eight most deadly cancers and their ranking on the ESMO Scale for Clinical Actionability of molecular Targets (ESCAT), NGS was recommended for advanced non-squamous non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), prostate cancer, ovarian cancer and cholangiocarcinoma. It was additionally noted as an alternative to PCR for advanced colorectal cancers.