Addressing Unmet Needs in SCLC

Missak Haigentz, MD, professor of medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, chief of Thoracic and Head and Neck Medical Oncology at the Rutgers Cancer Institute, highlights some of the significant unmet needs for patients with small cell lung cancer (SCLC).

SCLC has seen minimal advancements in care in recent years, unlike other types of lung cancer. Immunotherapy has emerged as a promising approach in oncology, and PD-L1–based therapies have been FDA-approved for patients with extensive-stage SCLC, showing some improvement in survival outcomes. However, these benefits are not as pronounced as those observed in the non–small cell lung cancer space.

For decades, treatment options for SCLC were largely limited to chemotherapy and radiation, which often yielded only modest survival benefits and were primarily palliative rather than curative. However, there is now potential for a more curative approach using consolidative immunotherapy, which may offer better outcomes for patients with SCLC.

As research continues and more clinical trials explore the potential of these therapies, experts have hope that the long-standing treatment gap in SCLC can be bridged, providing patients with more effective and life-extending options.

Transcription:

0:09 | This has been a patient population for whom we have not seen advances in cancer care in decades, which has been a major challenge. We have made many advances for the care of our lung cancer patients on the whole and in other, specific subsets of non–small cell lung cancer, but for small cell lung cancer, the advances have been very limited.

0:41 | Immunotherapy had previously been FDA approved, PD-L1–based immunotherapy has been approved in the setting for patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer by improving survival outcomes, albeit less so than what we see for non–small cell lung cancer. But now we have the opportunity to impact our patients in a more curative intent treatment setting with consolidative immunotherapy.

Transcription edited for clarity with AI.