Lung Cancer

The FDA approved the combination of dabrafenib and trametinib for patients with BRAF V600–positive advanced or metastatic non–small cell lung cancer.

Claire Verschraegen, MD, professor of medical oncology, University of Vermont Cancer Center, discussing combining avelumab (Bavencio) with other immunotherapy agents for patients with lung cancer.

Leena Gandhi, MD, PhD, associate professor, Department of Medicine, director, Thoracic Medical Oncology Program, discusses the findings of cohort G of the KEYNOTE-021 trial that explored the combination of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) with carboplatin and pemetrexed for patients with advanced nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Matthew D. Hellmann, MD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the CheckMate-032 study investigating nivolumab (Opdivo) with or without ipilimumab (Yervoy) for patients with small cell lung cancer (SCLC).

Patients with T790M-positive non–small cell lung cancer had superior outcomes when treated with osimertinib (Tagrisso) for central nervous system metastases, according to phase III results presented at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Christine M. Lovly, MD, PhD, discusses the changing treatment landscape for patients with EGFR-mutant and ALK-positive NSCLC.

Results from a single-arm, multicenter trial showed that the antibody-drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan (IMMU-132) was well-tolerated and produced a median duration of response of 6.0 months in previously treated patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer.

Javier Zulueta, MD, head of the Pneumology Department, co-director, Lung Cancer Area, Clinica Universidad de Navarra, discusses an additional application of the LuCED test, a non-invasive tool used to detect early stage lung cancer.

Marina Chiara Garassino, MD, medical consultant in the Medical Oncology Division, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy, discusses a subset analysis of the AURA3 trial, which demonstrated significant clinical activity with osimertinib (Tagrisso) for patients with EGFR T790M-mutation positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who also harbor brain metastases.

H. Jack West, MD, a thoracic oncologist of Swedish Cancer Institute at Swedish Medical Center, discusses some potential emerging changes coming to the field of EGFR-mutant non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), including next-generation EGFR inhibitors such as osimertinib (Tagrisso) that is now being explored in the FLAURA trial as a frontline treatment for these patients.

Alice T. Shaw, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, attending physician, Thoracic Cancer Program, Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses the phase III results of the international ALEX trial, which compared the alectinib (Alecensa) with crizotinib (Xalkori) in the frontline setting for patients with ALK-positive, metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Joshua Roth, PhD, assistant member, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, discusses the design of a novel risk-prediction algorithm in the context of screening patients for lung cancer.

Dacomitinib, a second-generation EGFR inhibitor, reduced the risk of disease progression by more than 40% and resulted in an average 6.5-month improvement in response duration compared with gefitinib (Iressa) as a first-line treatment for patients with advanced, EGFR-mutant non–small cell lung cancer.

Frontline treatment with nintedanib plus pemetrexed and cisplatin improved progression-free survival by 3.7 months for chemotherapy-naive patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma, according to data reported at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Nivolumab as monotherapy or in combination with ipilimumab may present a new second- or third-line treatment option for patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma, based on preliminary findings from a phase II trial where nivolumab alone or in the combination improved disease control and prolonged survival in patients with this rare but aggressive cancer.

In patients with ALK-positive non-small cell lung cancer, the second-generation TKI inhibitor alectinib (Alecensa) delayed progression by an additional 15 months compared with the standard-of-care crizotinib (Xalkori).

The frontline combination of pembrolizumab, pemetrexed, and carboplatin reduced the risk of progression or death by 50% and nearly doubled objective response rates compared with chemotherapy alone for patients with advanced non-squamous NSCLC.

Vassiliki A. Papadimitrakopoulou, MD, professor, Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses treatment options for patients with EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

John V. Heymach, MD, PhD, chairman, Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the significance of nivolumab (Opdivo) for patients with lung cancer.

This review will focus on current therapies used in the first-line setting for advanced EGFR mutation positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) followed by emerging data that may lead to a transition in the choice for initial therapy in these patients.

Lurbinectedin (PM01183 or PM1183), a transcription inhibitor that induces DNA double-strand breaks, is being combined with doxorubicin in a phase III trial for patients with recurrent small cell lung cancer in the hopes of providing a superior option to the current standard-of-care second-line chemotherapy.