Treating Patients With EGFR-Mutant Lung Cancer With Targeted Therapies

Heather Wakelee, MD, a professor of medicine at Stanford University Medical Center, discusses how physicians are treating patients with advanced lung cancer using targeted therapies, such as EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) in patients harboring anEGFRmutation.

It has been known for a while thatEGFRmutations are targetable with EGFR TKIs, says Wakelee. Based on data from the phase III FLAURA trial (NCT02296125), osimertinib(Tagrisso) may be a better EGFR TKI option to start with because of the longer duration of response and improved overall survival compared with other EGFR TKIs.

                                                                                                                     

For patients withEGFR-mutant lung cancers, Wakelee believes that osimertinib is a better treatment as it is more tolerated in patients. However, she warns that physicians should be mindful of potential cardiac and other toxicities.

TheEGFRstory set the paradigm, leading to research in other driver mutations, such as ALK,BRAF, and others.

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