Role of Metastasectomy for Tissue Acquisition for Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocyte Harvest and Biomarker/Genomic Testing

Tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy is an emerging paradigm with promising early results for a patient population without many good alternatives. In some cases where the primary tumor or soft tissues metastases cannot be harvested, there may be a role for the thoracic surgeon to harvest tissue from pulmonary metastases. Typically, these can be limited resections with most cases being amenable to a wedge resection as only 1 cm of tissue is usually required. As a result, in appropriately selected patients, there has been shown to be a low risk of pulmonary, cardiovascular, infectious, and wound complications.