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.
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).
Dean Fennell, FRCP, PhD, of the University of Leicester, discusses phase III results from the CONFIRM trial, which sought a standard immunotherapy treatment to improve overall survival for patients with mesothelioma who have relapsed after taking pemetrexed and cisplatin. Globally, the incidence of mesothelioma is on the rise; in the United Kingdom alone, it has gone up nearly 500% since the 1970s (Abstract PS01.11).
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.
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).