Lung Cancer

Veterans with newly diagnosed lung cancer who had mental health disorders tended to have better cancer outcomes if they participated in mental health treatment.

Fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (Enhertu) could provide patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who harbor HER2 exon 20 insertion mutations and high HER2 expression a more specific and less toxic treatment compared with platinum doublet chemotherapy. However, the jury is still out on whether the agent will be pursued as an alternative frontline therapy and in both patient subsets.

The combination of atezolizumab (Tecentriq) plus carboplatin/etoposide continued to demonstrate an improvement in overall survival (OS) versus chemotherapy alone as a frontline treatment for patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC), regardless of PD-L1 and blood tumor mutational burden (bTMB) status.

The FDA has approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda) to treat adult and pediatric patients with unresectable or metastatic solid tumors that are tissue tumor mutational burden–high (≥10 mutations/megabase) and have progressed following prior therapy and who have no satisfactory alternative treatment options.

The FDA approved lurbinectedin (Zepzelca) for the treatment of adult patients with metastatic small cell lung cancer with disease progression, following platinum-based chemotherapy.

The 4-drug combination of atezolizumab (Tecentriq), bevacizumab (Avastin), carboplatin, and paclitaxel (ABCP) improved survival while maintaining good health-related quality of life (QOL) in patients with nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer .

The FDA has approved the combination of ramucirumab (Cyramza) and erlotinib (Tarceva) as a frontline treatment for patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors harbor EGFR exon 19 deletions (Ex19del) or exon 21 (L858R) substitution mutations.

A recent survey highlights the multiple barriers to molecular testing in lung cancer, and solutions to overcome them.

Immunotherapy should be continued for up to 2 years in patients with metastatic lung cancer who are responding to the treatment, unless they experience disease progression or excessive toxicity, according to Gilberto de Lima Lopes, MD.

The FDA has approved brigatinib (Alunbrig) for the first-line treatment of patients with ALK-positive metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), as detected by an FDA-approved test.

The FDA continues to approve new cancer drugs, with multiple treatment regimens getting the agency’s OK within the last week.

The FDA has approved the single-agent atezolizumab as a first-line treatment for patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer who have a high PD-L1 expression and no EGFR or ALK genomic tumor aberrations.

People who quit smoking at any time, even up to 2 years before a lung cancer diagnosis, have increased chances of survival after their diagnosis, according to data during a 2020 ASCO Virtual Scientific Program press briefing.

The FDA approved nivolumab (Opdivo) plus ipilimumab (Yervoy) for the frontline treatment of patients with metastatic or recurrent non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with no EGFR or ALK aberrations.

The FDA approved selpercatinib for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer, medullary thyroid cancer, and other thyroid cancers with RET alterations.

The FDA granted an accelerated approval to capmatinib for the treatment of adults with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer with a mutation that leads to MET exon 14 skipping (METex14).

In the adjuvant setting, circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) may be a biomarker for the detection of post-surgical minimal residual disease (MRD) and for determining the clonality of relapsing disease.

The FDA has granted a breakthrough therapy designation to mobocertinib for the treatment of patients with EGFR exon 20–mutant non–small cell lung cancer.

With minimally invasive procedures to test lung cancer tumors, there often isn't enough tissue to undergo a full biomarker test, pointing toward the strength of liquid biopsies, explained Lynette M. Sholl, MD, chief of thoracic pathology at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and associate professor at Harvard Medical School.

Bristol Myers Squibb recently announced that the FDA granted priority review to nivolumab plus ipilimumab in combination with chemotherapy as a first-line treatment for metastatic NSCLC.

The FDA granted priority review to pembrolizumab monotherapy for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients with unresectable or metastatic TMB-high solid tumors who have progressed following prior treatment and who have no satisfactory alternative treatment options.

Radiation therapy is key in treating patients with small cell and non-small cell lung cancer, explained Terence T. Sio, MD, MS, radiation oncologist and assistant professor of radiation oncology at the Mayo Clinic.

The FDA approved durvalumab (Imfinzi) plus standard-of-care (SoC) chemotherapies etoposide with either carboplatin or cisplatin (platinum-etoposide) for the treatment of adults with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC).

After nearly 4 decades of stagnation, the advent of immunotherapy has transformed the frontline treatment paradigm for patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC). However, biomarkers are needed to better inform which patients are most likely to respond to checkpoint inhibitors, said Jason Niu, MD, PhD.