Dr. Mason on the Intersection of Surgery and Biomarkers in NSCLC

David P. Mason, MD, Baylor Scott & White Center for Thoracic Surgery, discusses a case that demonstrates the evolution of lung cancer surgery in a biomarker-driven era.

Mason recalls a setting of oligometastatic disease in which biomarker-driven therapy was used based on the findings that the patient was PD-L1 high. The patient was relatively young, in her 50s, who presented with a tumor that was metastatic to the brain. She was treated on trial with a PD-L1 inhibitor that controlled her disease for 2 years. At the end of that therapy, she had a single residual area of tumor in her lung, which was in her right upper lobe. The decision was to go ahead and remove it considering she had progressed nowhere else, and that may have been her only site of disease.

In surgical resection, her lung demonstrated no evidence of residual disease.