Main Takeaways From the MYLUNG Study in mNSCLC

Nicholas J. Robert, MD, an oncologist at US Oncology Network and the vice president of Medical Affairs, Ontada, discusses the main findings from the MYLUNG Consortium.

The study included 3474 adults and investigators aimed to assess patient factors associated with the rates of biomarker testing in order to identify trends in testing rates for patients, including those with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (mNSCLC).

Findings revealed that there were lower comprehensive biomarker testing rates associated with Black or African American patients (Odds Ratio [OR] 0.71; 95% Cl, 0.54-0.93, P = .01) those from a smaller practice sizes (OR 0.84; 95% Cl, 0.68-1.04, P = .11), Southern practices (OR 2.04; CI 1.24-3.34, P = .005), and patients with squamous cell histology (OR 1.76; 95% 1.33-3.23, P < .0001).

Robert notes that it will be important to further understand the clinical and social determinants of health when evaluating interventions in order to improve testing rates in future phases of the MYLUNG study.

Transcription:

0:08 | The takeaways are that in this population of about 3500 patients, all had metastatic non-small cell lung cancer, and all had received some systemic therapy. Patients who didn't receive any treatment, maybe very advanced disease, poor performance, status, elderly, whatever, they're not included, but that's only a small number of patients. The issue was that they had biomarker testing done, and there were 5 biomarkers that we looked at which were considered the appropriate biomarkers, which was recommended by guideline groups to be tested. We found that only 46% of those patients had all 5 biomarkers. Then we looked at indicators that predicted who was getting tested.

1:00 | We looked at a list of variables like age, gender, initial stage, performance status, and what we found, because we also looked at race, was that African Americans were less tested. We looked at histology and we found that patients with squamous histology are less tested. We expected that to change a bit because for a while, it was a little unclear from the guidelines whether you should test squamous, but we are seeing more squamous cells [patients] being tested, especially with the increased biomarkers. The other category was practice size, so patients that see less lung cancer did less complete panel testing. Lastly, albumin, lower albumin which we think is related to poor performance status and less testing.