Biomarker-Driven Lung Cancer

Despite recommendations from the United States Preventative Services Task Force, 1.9% of the 7.6 million current and former heavy smokers underwent cancer screening in 2016, suggesting screening is still inadequate. These results were presented ahead of the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting being held in Chicago, Illinois on June 1-5, 2018.

According to findings&nbsp;released ahead of the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, the use of next-generation sequencing (NGS) for patients with&nbsp;metastatic non&ndash;small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) can save&nbsp;Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) payers $1.4 million to $2.1 million. The findings additionally showed that NGS saved commercial insurance providers more than $250,000.<br /> &nbsp;

Frontline Treatment Strategies in EGFR-Mutant NSCLC

Ben Levy, MD, recently shared the treatment considerations and decisions he makes when treating patients with metastatic non&ndash;small cell lung cancer. Levy, clinical director of Medical Oncology, John Hopkins Sydney Kimmel Center, Washington, DC, explained his treatment decisions based on a case scenario during a <em>Targeted Oncology</em> live case-based peer perspectives presentation.

Chyke Doubeni, MD, chair of Family Medicine and Community Health at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and Debra P. Ritzwoller, PhD, of Kaiser Permanente, have been chosen to codirect the new Center for Research to Optimize Precision Lung Cancer Screening.

Based on findings from the phase III IMpower150 trial, a supplemental biologics license application for atezolizumab has been granted a priority review by the FDA&nbsp;for use in combination with bevacizumab, carboplatin, and paclitaxel for the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic nonsquamous non&ndash;small cell lung cancer.

Alice Shaw, MD, PhD, director of Thoracic Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital, discussed the efficacy results from a recent trial investigating lorlatinib as treatment for patients with anaplastic lymphoma kinase-positive (ALK) non&ndash;small cell lung cancer that had failed other treatments prior, including crizotinib (Xalkori) and other multiple ALK tyrosine-kinase inhibitors.

The FDA has received a supplemental biologics license application seeking approval for pembrolizumab in combination with standard chemotherapy as a treatment for patients with metastatic squamous non&ndash;small cell lung cancer.

Antibiotics administered within 30 days of initiating treatment with PD-1 and PD&shy;-L1 inhibitors were associated with poorer survival and increased risk for disease progression in patients with renal cell carcinoma or non-small cell lung cancer.

The FDA approved several indications throughout the month of April 2018.&nbsp;A number of drugs were granted priority review and Fast Track designation. The FDA also halted all clinical trials using&nbsp;tazemetostat as treatment, and new initiatives were introduced&nbsp;to help ease the development of genetic and genomic-based tests.&nbsp;Check out our list of all FDA happenings from April 2018.

Based on data from the phase III KEYNOTE-189 trial, frontline pembrolizumab has been granted a priority review by the FDA&nbsp;for use in combination with standard chemotherapy for patients with metastatic nonsquamous non&ndash;small cell lung cancer, according to Merck, the manufacturer of the PD-1 inhibitor.&nbsp;

The physician editor-in-chief of&nbsp;The Journal of Targeted Therapies in Cancer&trade;, found 2 articles particularly interesting in this issue on therapeutic possibilities&nbsp;for patients with recurrent and metastatic epithelial cancers.. These articles show&nbsp;that combinatorial strategies harnessing conventional modalities such as radiation therapy (RT) and immune stimulatory approaches may have additional value for this population of patients.

When findings of larotrectinib,&nbsp;a pan-TRK&nbsp;inhibitor co-developed by Bayer and Loxo Oncology, that generated significant excitement for the treatment of both adult and pediatric patients with TRK fusion cancers,&nbsp;were presented during the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting, the small molecule was lauded as a future standard of care for patients with advanced solid tumors harboring a TRK fusion.

This article provides a short historical overview of major lung cancer vaccination studies performed in the last decade to set the perspective on the development of current clinical trials of therapeutic cancer vaccines for patients with non&ndash;small cell lung cancer.&nbsp;