Cancer ranks as a leading cause of death in every country in the world, and, for the first time, female breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer, overtaking lung cancer, according to a collaborative report from the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the International Agency for Research...
Antibody-drug conjugates directed against HER2, HER3, and trophoblast cell-surface antigen 2 (TROP2) are showing encouraging antitumor activity in advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to research presented during the virtual edition of the International Association for the Study...
Tailoring adjuvant chemotherapy based on the expression of two molecular markers did not lead to a survival advantage in patients with completely resected stage II to III non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in the phase III ITACA trial. This result was presented during the virtual edition of the...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Taofeek K. Owonikoko, MD, PhD, and colleagues, the phase III CheckMate 451 trial showed no improvement in overall survival with combined nivolumab and ipilimumab vs placebo as maintenance therapy for extensive-disease small cell lung cancer. Study ...
Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Priority Review to the HIF-2α inhibitor belzutifan for the treatment of patients with von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease–associated renal cell carcinoma. The agency also granted Fast Track designation to poziotinib for the treatment of...
In an analysis of updated evidence on low-dose computed tomography (CT) screening for lung cancer reported in JAMA, Jonas et al found that screening can reduce lung cancer mortality but may be associated with a range of potential harms. The analysis was performed to inform the new U.S. Preventive...
In a phase II trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Grønberg et al found that use of high-dose vs standard-dose twice daily thoracic radiotherapy as part of first-line chemoradiotherapy was associated with significantly improved overall survival and similar toxicity in patients with limited-stage...
Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that the agency will hold a public meeting of the Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee on April 27 to 29 to discuss six indications granted accelerated approval that have since reported results from confirmatory trials that have not...
The ASCO Post reached out to Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, FACP, FASCO, Chief of Medical Oncology and Associate Cancer Center Director for Translational Research at Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital, New Haven, for his thoughts on the LCMC3 trial of neoadjuvant atezolizumab.1 Dr. Herbst led...
Neoadjuvant treatment with single-agent atezolizumab in patients with stage IB to IIIB lung cancer resulted in a major pathologic response rate of 21% and a pathologic complete response rate of 7%, in the primary analysis of the Lung Cancer Mutation Consortium 3 (LCMC3) study.1 The findings were...
“It has been a long time coming to see a positive randomized phase III study with a checkpoint inhibitor in relapsed mesothelioma,” said the study’s invited discussant, Rina Hui, MBBS, PhD, Clinical Professor of Medicine, Crown Princess Mary Cancer Centre, Westmead Hospital, University of Sydney,...
For the first time, a treatment has been shown to improve overall survival in heavily pretreated patients with relapsed malignant mesothelioma. In the phase III CONFIRM trial, single-agent nivolumab led to a significant improvement in both overall and progression-free survival, according to...
On February 3, 2021, tepotinib was granted accelerated approval for treatment of adult patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) harboring mesenchymal-epithelial transition (MET) exon 14–skipping alterations.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was supported by findings from the...
Fred R. Hirsch, MD, PhD, of Mount Sinai Medical Center, invites his colleagues to enroll their patients in a large prospective study, for which he serves as Principal Investigator. The study is searching for solutions for treating patients with lung cancer who also have the coronavirus, because so many experience an aggressive course of infection.
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Jonathan W. Goldman, MD, of the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles, and colleagues, updated results from the phase III CASPIAN trial show maintained improvement in overall survival with first-line durvalumab plus...
Today, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) published a final recommendation statement on screening for lung cancer in people who do not have signs or symptoms. Based on the evidence, the USPSTF recommends yearly screening using a low-dose computed tomography (CT) scan for people aged...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Rafal Dziadziuszko, MD, and colleagues, an updated integrated analysis of three phase I or II trials of entrectinib in patients with advanced ROS1-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) indicated that treatment continues to be associated with...
Hossein Borghaei, DO, of Fox Chase Cancer Center, discusses phase I results from a study of AMG 757, an experimental bispecific T-cell–engager (BiTE) immune therapy aimed at the DLL3 molecular target in patients with small cell lung cancer. At this early stage, results show clinical efficacy and safety, with 37% of 51 evaluable patients exhibiting disease control (Abstract OA11.03).
On March 3, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted regular approval to lorlatinib (Lorbrena) for patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors are anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive, as detected by an FDA-approved test. The FDA also approved the...
In a Canadian single-center phase II feasibility study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Cho et al found that a treatment protocol (surgery for mesothelioma after radiotherapy, also known as SMART) consisting of hemithoracic intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) followed by extrapleural...
On March 1, Merck announced the company is voluntarily withdrawing the U.S. indication for pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for the treatment of patients with metastatic small cell lung cancer with disease progression on or after platinum-based chemotherapy and at least one other prior line of therapy. The ...
As reported in The Lancet by Sezer et al, the phase III EMPOWER-Lung 1 trial has shown improved overall and progression-free survival with cemiplimab-rwlc vs platinum doublet chemotherapy among patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with PD-L1 expression on ≥ 50% of tumor cells...
In the phase III KEYNOTE-598 study, the addition of ipilimumab to pembrolizumab increased toxicity without boosting efficacy as first-line therapy for metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in patients with high expression of PD-L1. The findings were presented at the International...
The registrational phase II CodeBreak 100 trial has validated the power of KRAS inhibition with sotorasib (AMG 510) in advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).1 In a follow-up to the groundbreaking findings of the phase I trial, the phase II cohort has now shown a durable response rate of...
On February 22, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved cemiplimab-rwlc (Libtayo) for the first-line treatment of patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors have high PD-L1 expression (tumor proportion score [TPS] > 50%) as determined by an FDA-approved...
The randomized phase II NEOSTAR trial, which examined single-agent and combined neoadjuvant immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy in patients with stage I to III non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), found combination therapy produced a significant clinical benefit (as assessed by major pathologic...
Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, of Yale University, discusses results from the LUNG-MAP Master Protocol, which support the planned use of circulating tumor DNA for enrollment onto LUNG-MAP substudies, with a positive finding meriting inclusion in study; a negative finding, while considered inconclusive, requires the use of tissue samples (Abstract MA08.10).
Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Priority Review to treatments for KRAS G12C–mutated non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and high-risk, bacillus Calmette-Guérin–unresponsive non–muscle-invasive bladder cancer. A new drug application for a therapy for Waldenström’s...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Michael Boyer, MBBS, PhD, and colleagues, an interim analysis in the phase III KEYNOTE-598 trial showed no improvement in overall or progression-free survival with the addition of ipilimumab to pembrolizumab in previously untreated patients with...
On February 12, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved trilaciclib (Cosela) as the first therapy in its class to reduce the frequency of chemotherapy-induced bone marrow suppression in adults receiving certain types of chemotherapy for extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (SCLC)....
Martin Reck, MD, PhD, of LungenClinic, discusses results from the IMpower133 study of carboplatin plus etoposide with or without atezolizumab in patients with untreated extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (Abstract OA11.06).
Martin Reck, MD, PhD, of the LungenClinic, discusses the results from KEYNOTE-799, which explored a new strategy to increase the intensity of treatment in patients with unresectable, locally advanced, stage III non–small cell lung cancer (Abstract OA02.03).
As reported in The Lancet by Paul Baas, MD, and colleagues, a prespecified interim analysis in the phase III CheckMate 743 trial has shown improved overall survival with first-line nivolumab/ipilimumab vs platinum-based chemotherapy in patients with unresectable malignant pleural mesothelioma. The...
Jill Feldman, a patient advocate who has lost five family members to lung cancer and is herself a 12-year cancer survivor living with EGFR-positive disease, describes her family history of cancer, how she has worked with her physicians for more than a decade to survive her own diagnosis, and the message she would like all oncologists to hear.
Luis M. Montuenga, PhD, of the University of Navarra, discusses the potential contributions of biomarkers, promising biomarker panels being tested and published, the need to standardize biospecimen collection, and how to improve the sensitivity of these biomarkers (Abstract PL05.06).
Bruce E. Johnson, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, offers his expert perspective on single-arm drug approvals for targeted agents between 2016 and 2020, the need for biomarker testing, and the societal costs of drug development (Abstract PL04.03).
Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, of Yale University, discusses two key abstracts from the ADAURA trial: the use of osimertinib as adjuvant therapy for resected EGFR-mutated non–small cell lung cancer; and patient-reported outcomes, which showed a benefit in disease-free survival and maintenance of health-related quality of life in patients with resected stage IB to IIIA disease (Abstracts OA06.04 and OA06.03).
Justin F. Gainor, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses two key phase II studies on non–small cell lung cancer: nivolumab vs nivolumab plus ipilimumab in EGFR-mutant disease and the oral selective AXL inhibitor bemcentinib with pembrolizumab in advanced disease (Abstracts OA01.06 and OA01.07).
Martin Reck, MD, PhD, of the LungenClinic, discusses findings of the KEYNOTE-598 study, which showed that pembrolizumab plus ipilimumab was more toxic and offered no more benefit in terms of efficacy than pembrolizumab plus placebo in first-line therapy for patients with metastatic high PD-L1–expressing non–small cell lung cancer (Abstract PS01.09).
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Alice T. Shaw, MD, PhD, Global Head of Translational Clinical Oncology at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research,* and colleagues, an interim analysis of the phase III CROWN trial has shown that first-line lorlatinib significantly improved...
Jill Feldman, a patient advocate and lung cancer survivor, discusses the current challenges and potential solutions to including more people of color and those in underserved communities in clinical trial research (Abstract PL04.06).
In an analysis of the phase III CheckMate 017 and 057 trials in previously treated patients with advanced squamous (017) and nonsquamous (057) non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Hossein Borghaei, DO, MS, and colleagues found pooled 5-year overall...
Fred R. Hirsch, MD, PhD, of Mount Sinai Medical Center, discusses Lung-MAP studies in which a higher tumor mutation burden determined by next-generation sequencing was linked to overall and progression-free survival across two immunotherapy trials, and was independent of PD-L1 status (Abstract OA01.04).
Using a host immune classifier (HIC) test for patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) may provide better predictors of treatment response and improve outcomes, according to research presented by Akerley et al at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) 2020 World...
More than a year since the new coronavirus crisis began, its impact on cancer care has been stark, with “50% of governments (having) cancer services partially or completely disrupted because of the pandemic,” said André Ilbawi, MD, of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Department of...
A study presented by Nobuyuki Takahashi, MD, of the Center for Cancer Research at the National Cancer Institute, at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) 2020 World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC) Singapore (Abstract OA11.05) demonstrated that there may be an inherited ...
Patient-reported outcomes from the phase III CROWN study showed that time to treatment deterioration in chest pain, dyspnea, and cough was comparable between those who received lorlatinib and patients who took crizotinib. The research was presented at the International Association for the Study of...
Silvia Novello, MD, PhD, of the University of Turin, discusses phase III results from the ITACA trial, which explored the notion of improving survival by customizing treatment and reducing toxicities for patients with completely resected stage II to IIIA non–small cell lung cancer (Abstract PS01.04).
A study presented by researchers with the Ministry of Health and Welfare in Taiwan confirmed low-dose computed tomography (CT) screening may be feasible in a predefined, never-smoking, high-risk population. The research was presented at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer...
Two presentations based on data from the ADAURA clinical trial advanced previous research that demonstrated improved disease-fee survival outcomes for patients with surgically resected non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) receiving osimertinib, while also maintaining quality of life. The data were...