By Corey Langer, MD, IASLC Lung Cancer News Editor Posted: June 2018 The therapeutic landscape irrevocably altered on April 17, 2018, when three pivotal trials—KEYNOTE 189, CheckMate 227 and Impower 150—were presented during a plenary session at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting in Chicago. As of that point, immunotherapy (IO) had…

By Fred R. Hirsch, MD, PhD Posted: April 2018 Immunotherapy is a very encouraging development in the treatment of patients with lung cancer. At this phase of its refinement, we struggle with the challenge of how to select the right patients for the right treatment. Patient selection is paramount because only 20% to 30% of patients…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved durvalumab on February 16, 2018, for the treatment of patients with stage III NSCLC whose tumors are unresectable and whose cancer has not progressed after treatment with chemoradiation— the first drug for this indication. The approval was based on the phase III PACIFIC trial, a randomized trial of…

By Enriqueta Felip, MD, PhD Posted: February 2018 ALK-directed TKIs are effective first- and second-line therapies in patients with ALK rearrangements. Testing of all patients with stage IV adenocarcinomas of the lung for ALK aberrations is supported by international guidelines.1,2 In Europe, there are also a number of published national guidelines supporting ALK testing in…

The Nurse and Allied Health Professionals Committee, which consist of clinicians and researchers from around the world, identified the need for an evidence-based guideline to support nurses and allied health providers in managing side effects from immunotherapy, which are different from the side effects from chemotherapy and other traditional lung cancer treatments. This can assist…

By Beth Eaby-Sandy, MSN, CRNP Posted: February 2018 When I started in thoracic medical oncology 15 years ago, we just had chemotherapy, and patient education was focused and streamlined. Chemotherapy could be toxic and life threatening, but we had specific warnings and guidelines to give to patients. We now have chemotherapy, targeted therapies, and immunotherapy…

By Hossein Borghaei, MS, DO Posted: February 2018 The role of checkpoint inhibitors in the management of recurrent or metastatic NSCLC is now well established. For patients who are treatment naive who do not have a driver mutation and who have a high PD-L1 expression (≥50% tumor proportion score), frontline pembrolizumab is the accepted standard…

What is the current standard of care in the adjuvant setting post-resection of high-risk NSCLC in your practice or nationally?Posted: October 2017 Current Chinese Lung Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Guideline from the Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology (CSCO) recommends adjuvant platinum- based doublet chemotherapy as the standard of care (SOC) for completely resected stage II-III…

By Julien Mazieres, MD, PhD Posted: October 2017 The standard of care for patients postresection for lung cancer is adjuvant chemotherapy, usually a platinum-based regimen.1 The deciphering of lung oncogenesis has led to the routine use of targeted therapy in metastatic lung cancer but, to date, the use of these agents in the adjuvant setting…

By Cynthia L. Kryder, MS, CCC-Sp Editor Note: IASLC Lung Cancer News is pleased to provide the following overview, which is followed by expert commentary by Dr. Heather Wakelee, Dr. Yi-Long Wu, and Dr. Julien Mazières. In patients with resected stage II-IIIA non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), cisplatin-based adjuvant chemotherapy over the last decade has…