Lung Cancer

Naiyer Rizvi, MD, discusses pivotal clinical trials of immunotherapy agents for patients with lung cancer and expresses his optimism regarding the treatment for the field.

Although lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related mortality in the United States and 5-year survival rates are low at 17.8%, the grim picture for this tumor type is starting to shift to a more hopeful one as its biology is becoming better understood, facilitating treatment selection and providing researchers with new therapeutic targets.

Jonathan Riess, MD, assistant professor of Medicine, Division of Hematology and Oncology, UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses ROS1 fusions in lung cancer.

Edward S. Kim, MD, chair, Solid Tumor Oncology and Investigational Therapeutics, Donald S. Kim Distinguished Chair for Cancer Research, Levine Cancer Institute, Carolinas HealthCare System, discusses combination therapies in the treatment of patients with lung cancer.

James Stevenson, MD, medical oncologist at Cleveland Clinic, discusses the potential of immunotherapy agents as treatment for patients with squamous non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Roy Decker, MD, PhD, associate professor of Therapeutic Radiology, Yale Cancer Center, discusses stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) as a treatment for patients with lung cancer.

The FDA has granted a priority review to a supplemental biologics license application for pembrolizumab (Keytruda) as a first-line treatment for patients with PD-L1–positive non–small cell lung cancer.

John D. Minna, MD, who helped establish the first tumor lines and discover the c-Myc oncogene in lung cancer, was honored in the Lung Cancer category with a 2015 Giants of Cancer Care award, a program that OncLive launched to recognize leaders in the field.

The European Commission has approved crizotinib (Xalkori) as a treatment for patients with advanced ROS1-positive non–small cell lung cancer.

Atezolizumab (Tecentriq) improved survival compared with docetaxel in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer following the failure of platinum-based chemotherapy.

Nathan Pennell, MD, PhD, associate professor of Medicine at Cleveland Clinic, discusses the importance of testing patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) to determine if they harbor the EGFR mutation, as well as the agents available to target that genetic abnormality.

A new drug application has been submitted for brigatinib (AP26113) as a potential treatment for patients with advanced ALK-positive non–small cell lung cancer following resistance or intolerance to crizotinib (Xalkori).

Karen Kelly, MD, associate director for Clinical Research, Jennifer Rene Harmon Tegley and Elizabeth Erica Harmon Endowed Chair in Cancer Clinical Research, professor of Medicine, UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, UC Davis Health System, discusses the potential of immunotherapy combinations as treatment for patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Shirish Gadgeel, MD, medical oncologist, leader of the Thoracic Oncology Multidisciplinary Team at Karmanos Cancer Institute, Wayne State University, discusses the KEYNOTE-021 study, which is examining the combination of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and chemotherapy as a potential treatment for patients with non–small cell lung cancer.

In patients with EGFR-mutant non–small cell lung cancer, the incidence of leptomeningeal metastases is found to be common; moreover, the optimal treatment for this occurrence was determined to be tyrosine kinase inhibitors.

Paul Baas, MD, professor, Department of Thoracic Oncology, Netherlands Cancer Institute, discusses the future of treatment in mesothelioma.

Biomarkers, such as immune cell PD-L1 expression, mutational burden, and immune system activation should be investigated further to clarify the mechanisms behind response and nonresponse to immunotherapy in patients with lung cancer.

Paul A. Bunn Jr, MD, discusses the meaning of the CheckMate-026 results with frontline nivolumab in NSCLC and issues with the trial's primary endpoint of progression-free survival.

Biomarker-driven trials that include multiple substudies represent a new approach for investigating which patients with lung cancer are more likely to respond to different targeted therapies and are helping to set the pace throughout the oncology field.

The past few years have seen rapid evolution in the treatment and handling of advanced non–small cell lung cancer, prompting questions on how to optimize immunotherapies and targeted agents as well as incorporate biomarker testing.

The optimal use of emerging assays that characterize molecular abnormalities from plasma in late-stage non–small cell lung cancer will be to augment tissue biopsies at initial diagnosis and to evaluate patients for second- and third-line therapies.

The combination of selumetinib and docetaxel failed to improve survival compared with docetaxel alone as a second-line treatment for patients with KRAS-mutant locally advanced or metastatic non–small cell lung cancer.

Paul A. Bunn Jr, MD, discussed how combining immunotherapy with chemotherapy, molecular therapy, or anti-angiogenic therapy has shown promising results in recent randomized trials of patients with lung cancer, although the combinations have yet to demonstrate clear superiority.