NSCLC Blood Sampling Protocol for Biomarker Analysis

The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Boards of the University of Maryland Baltimore. The surgical pathologic staging was determined according to the TNM classification of the International Union Against Cancer with the American Joint Committee on Cancer and the International Staging System for Lung Cancer [44 (link)]. Histopathologic classification was determined according to the World Health Organization classification [45 (link)]. Altogether, we recruited 39 patients with NSCLC and 32 cancer-free controls (Table 5). Blood samples were collected with the written informed consent from participants and obtained before therapeutic intervention using BD Vacutainer^® Venous Blood Collection Tubes (Becton, Dickinson and Company, Franklin Lakes, NJ, USA). The blood samples were immediately processed for plasma preparation via centrifugation at 3000 rpm (1900× g) for 10 min at 4 °C within less than 2 h after collection, as previously described in our published works [14 (link),15 (link),16 (link),17 (link),18 (link),19 (link),20 (link),21 (link)].