Precision Medicine in Oncology®

Frontline treatment with osimertinib improved median overall survival by 6.8 months compared with erlotinib or gefitinib for patients with metastatic, EGFR-mutant non–small cell lung cancer.

Miguel A. Villalona-Calero, MD, discusses the availability of ALK inhibitors for patients with ALK-positive non–small cell lung cancer and the importance of implementing sequencing panels to guide treatment.

The European Commission has approved larotrectinib for the treatment of certain adult and pediatric patients with solid tumors who have an NTRK gene fusion without a known acquired resistance mutation.

Alex A. Adjei, MD, PhD, a professor of oncology and pharmacology at Mayo Clinic, discussed the history of five target genes: NTRK, RET, MET, BRAF, and HER2, as well as the exciting data coming out for the lung cancer subset.

Patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer and actionable mutations had similar progression-free survival whether treatment guidance came from tissue or circulating tumor (ct)DNA analysis using the Guardant360 assay, a matched retrospective comparison showed.

Alexander Drilon, MD, provides insight into his study on the role of larotrectinib in the treatment of patients with TRK fusions and brain metastases or those with primary CNS disease.

Carol Mangione, MD, MSPH, shares insight on the specifics of the recommendations related to BRCA-mutation testing and how the USPSTF hopes these suggestions will impact patient outcomes.

Research forms the backbone of medical knowledge, and research integrity is a crucial responsibility of any scientist.

Using up-front, broadpanel genomic tests that include hundreds of genes can save money and, in some cases, improve outcomes compared with other diagnostic approaches, especially in lung cancer but also increasingly in breast, colorectal, skin, and other cancers.

Vassiliki A. Papadimitrakopoulou, MD, professor of medicine, Department of Thoracic Head and Neck Medical Oncology, Division of Cancer Medicine, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the implications of the NILE trial in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Cell-free DNA-based detection of microsatellite instability status was found to be highly concordant with tissue-based MSI testing.

Although research findings have established many applications for genetic information in breast cancer, not enough patients are being tested for the risk of germline mutations and new strategies are needed to broaden the clinical application of genomic advancements.

Sometimes referred to as massively parallel sequencing, next-generation sequencing evaluates millions of DNA sequences simultaneously, representing a true revolution compared with traditional, labor-intensive methods in which far less DNA could be sequenced at once.