Systemic, Targeted, & Immune Therapies

Treatment options for patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) are limited. While patients with advanced or inoperable MPM are traditionally treated with cisplatin and pemetrexed as a standard first-line treatment, there is still no established standard-of-care second-line therapy for these patients.1 Current second-line options after platinum-based chemotherapy have typically included either immune checkpoint inhibitors or…

As more data emerge and more investigational drugs are studied, the “undruggable” target is coming into focus.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality worldwide, with an estimated 2.1 million new cases and 1.8 million deaths in 2018—more than colon, breast, and prostate cancers combined.1 SCLC is a high-grade neuroendocrine carcinoma, typically metastatic at diagnosis; it has an exceptionally poor prognosis, with a dismal median OS of approximately 1 year.2…

The identification of activating EGFR mutations and ALK and ROS1 rearrangements has ushered in an era of precision medicine for advanced NSCLC characterized by swift advances and adaptive drug development. However, most patients with tumors harboring these genomic alterations derive durable, yet not indefinite, benefit from targeted therapies. Molecular and histologic evaluation at baseline and…

October 2, 2020, saw the first U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of a drug combination for malignant pleural mesothelioma in 16 years, since the combination cisplatin and pemetrexed was approved for this indication in 2004. During the intervening years, we have witnessed numerous negative clinical trials of drug combinations for this disease, mostly phase…

Identification of driver oncogenes in NSCLC is leading the method for accurate patient selection and proper targeting of actionable alterations. Several molecular events have been described, and different biomarkers are now incorporated in clinical practice, with MET as one of the latest.  Proto-oncogene MET is a tyrosine kinase transmembrane receptor for hepatocyte growth factor; it…

Therapies for NSCLC have evolved over the past 2 decades to account for the specific biology of the tumor and have improved outcomes for a multitude of patients. Discovery of activating mutations in the EGFR gene initiated the transition toward our understanding of driver mutations and the value of targeted therapy in subsets of patients…

Speaking as a medical oncologist who cares for patients with lung cancer, the present is filled with much hope. There has been a profusion of studies that report increasingly improved outcomes for patients with lung cancer, both in early and advanced stages.  Specifically, for a patient with advanced lung cancer with an EGFR-sensitizing mutation, the…