EGFR+ Lung Cancer

Screening for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) significantly cuts the death rate from prostate cancer, but at the same time, America’s medical community should work harder to avoid the screen’s potential pitfalls.

While the concept of cancer-specific immunotherapy is not new, it recently has been proven feasible as a rational treatment for patients with some of the most challenging and difficult malignancies.

Balazs Halmos, MD, section chief of Thoracic Oncology at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, discusses the future of immunotherapy treatments.

New treatments that are currently in development have begun to show promise for patients diagnosed with ALK-positive non-small-cell lung cancer (ALK+ NSCLC), a subset of patients who have historically faced poor outcomes.

Alice T. Shaw, MD, PhD, an attending physician in the Center for Thoracic Cancers at Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses resistance to crizotinib in patients with ALK-positive lung cancer

NSCLC that is positive for ALK, a receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK), typifies a phenomenon termed “oncogene addiction,” in which tumor cells depend on a single causative pathway or protein for their growth and survival.

Naiyer A. Rizvi, MD, an associate attending physician, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses PD-L1 as a potential biomarker for immunotherapy agents for patients with lung cancer.

Chandra P. Belani, MD, Deputy Director, Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute, Miriam Beckner Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Penn State Hershey College of Medicine, discusses treating older patients who have non-small cell lung cancer

Lung cancer remains the single largest cause of cancer-related deaths, and the burden of the disease in the elderly population will only grow as life expectancy increases.

Lung cancer continues to be the leading cause of cancer-related mortality, resulting in ~1.4 million annual deaths worldwide and 160,000 deaths each year in the United States.

Advances in the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have resulted in some positive outcomes in recent years, adding choices to the treatment armamentarium.

Although the current standard of care for advanced NSCLC remains platinum doublet chemotherapy, recent evidence suggests that most newly diagnosed patients may be candidates for targeted therapy as firstline treatment.

The second-line administration of ramucirumab in combination with docetaxel demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) compared with placebo plus docetaxel in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The announcement was made Feb. 19 by Eli Lilly and Company, the company developing the agent.

Anti-angiogenic therapy aims to disrupt blood supply to tumors and has proven clinical benefit in nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Chandra P. Belani, MD, discusses the VEGF-targeted agent nintedanib (BIBF 1120).

The FDA has granted a Breakthrough Therapy designation to dabrafenib for its potential as a treatment for patients with metastatic BRAF V600E mutation-positive NSCLC who have received at least one prior line of platinum-containing chemotherapy.

Bilal Piperdi, MD, discusses the recent advancements in non-small cell lung cancer treatment and what the future might bring.

LDK378 is a highly selective and potent inhibitor of ALK, and has demonstrated preclinical antitumor activity against tumors with acquired crizotinib resistance. In a phase I trial, LDK378 induced tumor response in 70% of patients with crizotinib-resistant NSCLC.

Alice T. Shaw, MD, PhD, from Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses the advent of more potent ALK inhibitors such as LDK378 and the treatment of ALK-positive lung cancer patients with crizotinib.

Marcia S. Brose, MD, PhD, Abramson Cancer Center, University of Pennsylvania, discusses BRAF mutations in thyroid cancer.a

Naiyer A. Rizvi, MD, discusses the phenomenon of pseudoprogression in patients with lung cancer after they receive immunotherapy treatment.

Frederick Alan Rapoport, MD, discusses the results of the SALT 1 and SALT 2 studies, which measured the efficacy of tolvaptan (Samsca) in patients with euvolemic and hypervolemic hyponatremia

Alice T. Shaw, MD, PhD, discusses using crizotinib to treat patients with ALK-positive lung cancer.

Charles S. Fuchs, MD, MPH, director, Gastrointestinal Cancer Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses targeting KRAS in colorectal cancer.

MPDL3280A produced durable responses in studies in patients with forms of locally advanced/metastatic cancers, including smokers with NSCLC who customarily have poorer responses to cancer therapies than nonsmokers.

Naiyer A. Rizvi, MD, an associate attending physician, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, discusses PD-1 and PD-L1 antibodies in development for the treatment of lung cancer.

PD-L1 expression in tumors is a candidate molecular marker warranting further investigation as a means to select patients for immunotherapy with an anti PD-1 antibody

Julie R. Brahmer, MD, from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the outlook for immunotherapies in cancer care.

Bilal Piperdi, MD, Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine, Department of Medicine (Oncology), Albert Einstein College of Medicine, comments on molecular targeted agents for stage III non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Today, the treatment options for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in the United States include targeted therapies aimed at angiogenesis (bevacizumab), EGFR mutations (erlotinib and afatinib), and ALK translocations (crizotinib).