# Charu Aggarwal

Source: https://onco.cc/people/charu-aggarwal/  
OnCo record `charu-aggarwal` (Person). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Showed that adding blood-based sequencing to tissue testing finds more targetable lung cancer mutations.

## Summary

Charu Aggarwal is the Leslye M. Heisler Professor for Lung Cancer Excellence and Section Chief of Thoracic and Head & Neck Medical Oncology at the Abramson Cancer Center, University of Pennsylvania. She is a thoracic oncologist known for plasma next-generation sequencing studies showing that adding blood-based testing to tissue testing finds more targetable lung cancer mutations, work that changed how metastatic lung cancer is genotyped. Her selected paper reports the clinical implications of plasma-based genotyping for delivering personalised therapy in metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer. She now leads immunotherapy and head and neck cancer trials at Penn.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Role: Leslye M. Heisler Professor for Lung Cancer Excellence; Section Chief, Thoracic and Head & Neck Medical Oncology
- Specialisms: Lung cancer; Liquid biopsy; Immunotherapy

## Sources

- Penn profile: https://www.pennmedicine.org/providers/profile/charu-aggarwal
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Aggarwal%20C%5BAuthor%5D

## Connected records

- cancers: [Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/head-and-neck/), [Non-small-cell lung cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/nsclc/)
- technologies: [Comprehensive genomic profiling](https://onco.cc/technologies/cgp/), [Liquid biopsy (ctDNA)](https://onco.cc/technologies/liquid-biopsy/)
- institutions: [Abramson Cancer Center, University of Pennsylvania](https://onco.cc/institutions/penn-abramson/)
- journals: [JAMA Oncology](https://onco.cc/journals/jama-oncology/)

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