Biomarker-Driven Lung Cancer

Two oncologists offer rationale for both sides of the argument for/against the upfront use of newer tyrosine kinase inhibitors for patients with ALK-positive or EGFR-mutant NSCLC.

Second-generation ALK inhibitor alectinib (Alecensa) demonstrated a 15-month improvement in progression-free survival compared with crizotinib (Xalkori), the first-generation ALK inhibitor and standard of care, in patients with&nbsp;<em>ALK</em>-positive non&ndash;small cell lung cancer.

It&rsquo;s been a busy month at the FDA. Here&rsquo;s a look back at all the news in the oncology field to come out of the FDA during the month of May.

Updates to the NCCN guidelines for the management of advanced NSCLC stress the importance of multiplexed biomarker testing at diagnosis to aid in the selection of appropriate first-line and subsequent lines of therapy.

Treatment of EGFR Mutant Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Ceritinib (Zykadia) has been approved by the FDA for the treatment of patients with <em>ALK</em>-positive, metastatic non&ndash;small cell lung cancer.

NSCLC with Multiple Sites of Metastasis and No Driver Mutation

Metastatic Lung Adenocarcinoma Without a Driver Mutation

Anna Farago, MD, PhD, assistant, medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses challenges in treating small cell lung cancer.

Durvalumab (Imfinzi) showed a modest but encouraging clinical benefit in patients with <em>EGFR</em>-mutant or <em>ALK</em>-positive non&ndash;small cell lung cancer with high tumor PD-L1 expression of &ge;25% in the third-line setting or beyond.

Jedd D. Wolchok, MD, PhD, chief, Melanoma and Immunotherapeutics Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses a phase 1/1b first in-human study of IPI-549, a PI3K gamma inhibitor as monotherapy and in combination with pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in patients with advanced solid tumors.

Julie R. Brahmer, MD, associate professor of Oncology, Bloomberg Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Johns Hopkins, discusses 5-year follow-up data from the CA209-003 study of nivolumab (Opdivo) in previously treated advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Jason Chesney, MD, PhD, has been appointed director of the University of Louisville&rsquo;s James Graham Brown Cancer Center.

Ceritinib (Zykadia) has been recommended for approval by the EMA&rsquo;s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use for the treatment of patients with ALK-positive, metastatic non&ndash;small cell lung cancer.

The genetic profile of treatment-resistant non-small cell lung cancer may be more complex than initially thought, according to a presentation by Zofia Piotrowska, MD.

Rafal Dziadziuszko, MD, PhD, a global leader in clinical thoracic oncology, was recently honored with the 2017 Heine H. Hansen Award by ESMO and the IASLC.&nbsp;

More Stage I cancers were diagnosed after the passage of the Affordable Care Act within 5 screenable disease types (colorectal cancer, female breast cancer, cervical cancer, lung cancer, and prostate cancer) than were diagnosed before ACA implementation.