Independent briefing
A daily briefing of sourced, fact-only updates on molecular residual disease, ctDNA, and MRD-relevant biomarkers across cancer types. Edited by Alan Tan, a genitourinary hematologist-oncologist. MRD and biomarker items are listed ahead of other news from the same stretch of days.
A free weekly MRD Watch email. No send date is set. Subscribe
Edited by Alan Tan, MDLatest Lung items. Open the Lung page.
How it works
“No evidence of disease” means the scan did not show a tumor. Alan Tan, MD, puts the gap this way, as an illustration rather than a cutoff: “To the human eye, a clear scan can still hide around 200 million cancer cells.” MRD testing, especially ultrasensitive MRD, looks for that leftover signal in blood.
How testing worksNov 15, 2026 ET
No update is dated today. The latest verified items are below, with MRD and biomarker reports ranked first.
Pinned items, then MRD and biomarker reports, then newer dates.
A Cell paper published online November 7, 2025, applied a whole-genome tumor-informed ctDNA assay to 2,994 plasma samples from 431 patients with non-small cell lung cancer in TRACERx and reported that detection below 80 parts per million, before and after surgery, was prognostic, and that patients who cleared ctDNA during adjuvant therapy had better outcomes.
Cell
A Natera press release dated November 5, 2026, describes a real-world SITC analysis of 424 patients on first-line immunotherapy for stage IV melanoma, kidney cancer, MSI-H colorectal cancer, or NSCLC: people with two consecutive negative Signatera results had 36-month overall survival of 93.2% versus 77.9% in all others (HR 0.24, P=0.0003), and among those complete molecular responders overall survival was 93.5% if immunotherapy continued and 89.4% if it stopped (P=0.42). These figures are from the company press release; the official SITC/JITC abstract was not retrieved.
Natera, Inc. company press release