Dr Kim on the Bridging the Gaps in Lung Cancer Meeting

Edward S. Kim, MD, MBA, physician-in-chief, City of Hope Orange County, vicephysician-in-chief, City of Hope National Medical Center, discusses the importance of the Bridging the Gaps in Lung Cancer meeting, and expands on the importance of educating clinicians on how to best implement new developments within lung cancer to address these gaps in care.

The Bridging the Gaps in Lung Cancer meeting was created to identify, discuss, and prioritize, current disparities in the treatment of patients with lung cancer, Kim begins. The meeting considered the challenges and limitations associated with care in clinical practice across the spectrum of race, gender, socioeconomic status, and locality. Potential strategies for prevention were also discussed, Kim adds.

Areas for improvement that were identified at the meeting will be prioritized in next year's session, and strategies to address these inequalities will also be discussed, Kim states. Additionally, meeting organizers hope to publish the conclusions and recommendations reached at this year’s meeting, Kim notes. Sharing this information with colleagues and the public may accelerate the work that needs to be done to close these gaps in care and improve patient outcomes, he says.

Experts in lung cancer are also focused on how to effectively share this knowledge with colleagues across community practices, Kim continues. The field of lung cancer is dynamic and approaches to treatment have greatly advanced in recent years with shifts in biomarker classification and the identification of new disease subtypes, Kim details. Precision medicine approaches have also gained significant traction in non–small-cell lung cancer through the introduction of biomarker-driven therapy, Kim states. However, many eligible patients do not fully benefit from these treatments because of existing limitations in utilizing predictive biomarkers. Additionally, some patients develop resistance to TKIs and immunotherapy, which can negatively affect their outcomes.

Up to this point, individualized treatment has been predominantly utilized in the metastatic setting, but innovation in this space has begun to move these strategies into earlier disease stages, Kim says. Accordingly, there is a greater emphasis on ensuring correct, prompt, and comprehensive evaluation and treatment of patients. Guidelines on how to best diagnosis, treat, and care for these patients are therefore vital to ensuring optimal patient benefit, Kim concludes.