Salivary Biomarkers for Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Detection

The investigators plan to recruit patients for a prospective study in patients in need of evaluation for lung lesions suspicious for cancer. Saliva samples will be collected before diagnostic evaluation including biopsy with subsequent blinded examination of the salivary markers without knowledge of the disease status. This prospective recruitment with retrospective blinded evaluation or PRoBE design satisfies the highest standards recommended by the National Cancer Institute for biomarker development. This process limits the selection bias that can confound retrospective studies. As the primary endpoint, a pre-specified multi-marker panel will be evaluated based on the combination of sensitivity and specificity. In addition, seven pre-specified individual candidate mRNA cancer markers and six internal reference or "housekeeping" genes will be evaluated. The performance of new multi-marker panels will also be assessed and compared with the prior pre-specified model based on sensitivity and specificity combinations as well as the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve.