Svetlana Nikic, Founder of Precision Oncology Consulting and Strategic Advisor at 2Strands Biosciences, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“NeXT Personal by Personalis, Inc. is emerging as a high-sensitivity MRD platform with potential to shape treatment decisions in early-stage cancers, particularly in the neoadjuvant setting where ctDNA levels are extremely low.
At the 2025 World Conference on Lung Cancer held in Barcelona last week, researchers presented exploratory findings from AstraZeneca’s phase III NeoADAURA trial showing that Personalis’ NeXT Personal ctDNA assay may help guide neoadjuvant immunotherapy in EGFR-mutant stage II–IIIB NSCLC.
The findings reported;
- Higher sensitivity: The assay detected MRD in 71% of patients, compared to 30% using EGFR mutation testing alone.
- Treatment impact: Patients treated with osimertinib + chemotherapy showed a greater reduction in ctDNA positivity versus chemotherapy alone.
- Response prediction: Patients who converted from ctDNA-positive to ctDNA-negative had significantly better pathological responses at surgery.
- Clinical implications: MRD-negative patients generally had smaller tumors and less nodal involvement, suggesting prognostic value.
- Next steps: Longer follow-up is needed to link MRD status with survival outcomes, but early data supports the use of ultrasensitive genomic testing to personalize neoadjuvant strategies.
Personalis CMO Richard Chen emphasized that NeXT Personal provides far greater sensitivity than other MRD assays.
Why is this important? Well erroneously called MRD negative patient could miss potentially life saving therapies within a clinical trial setting.
Very exciting to see how this data is adding on top of the recent announcements of ultra sensitive detection capabilities by NeXT Personal!”
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