Articles related to LUNG CANCER

The authors investigated the effect of adding radiotherapy to neoadjuvant chemotherapy on survival in patients with Stage III-N2 non-small cell lung cancer. Analysis included 1,175 patients diagnosed between 2004 and 2015; 799 (68.0%) underwent neoadjuvant CRT and 376 (32.0%) underwent neoadjuvant CT. Adding radiotherapy to chemotherapy showed a slightly higher median OS than chemotherapy alone (51 vs. 47 months, respectively), and a higher median CSS (75 vs. 59 months, respectively). However, these differences were not statistically significant.

HER2-targeted therapies have demonstrated substantial survival benefits for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer. So can we use those agents for HER2-positive NSCLC? Join Drs. Lyudmila Bazhenova and Benjamin Levy as they discuss the latest data around emerging agents for HER2-positive NSCLC and the best way to identify these mutations in clinical practice in this 15-minute CME activity.

The addition of the PD-1 inhibitor serplulimab to chemotherapy significantly prolonged survival compared with chemotherapy alone as first-line treatment of patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC). Interim analysis of the phase 3 ASTRUM-005 study – comparing serplumimab plus chemotherapy to chemotherapy alone in 1st line extensive stage SCLC – showed a median OS of 15.4 months with serplulimab compared with 10.9 months with placebo. Patients who received serplulimab also had significantly longer median progression-free survival (PFS) 5.8 vs. 4.3 months respectively. The study included 585 patients with untreated extensive stage-SCLC, were randomized 2:1 to serplulimab (4.5 mg/kg) or placebo every 3 weeks. All patients received carboplatin and etoposide every 3 weeks for up to four cycles.

Immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI)-refractory cancers are arguably one of the greatest unmet needs in oncology. In this randomized phase II substudy, patients ineligible for a biomarker-matched previously treated with ICI and platinum-based chemotherapy and progressive disease at least 84 days after initiation of ICI were randomly assigned to receive ramucirumab plus pembrolizumab (RP) or investigator’s choice standard of care (SOC: docetaxel/ramucirumab, docetaxel, gemcitabine, and pemetrexed). The study’s primary objective was to compare overall survival (OS). The median OS was 14.5 months for RP and 11.6 months for SOC. Docetaxel and ramucirumab were the most common SOC, received by 2/3 of patients. This randomized phase II trial demonstrated significantly improved OS with RP compared with SOC in patients with advanced NSCLC previously treated with ICI and chemotherapy.

This comprehensive review highlights the history of discovering RAS and the decades of studies targeting KRAS-driven lung cancer, to the present applications. Although KRAS inhibitors have 36%–45% objective response rates with a median duration of response of 10 months, many tumors do not respond, and a variety of mechanisms of resistance have been observed, including new KRAS alterations, activation of alternate RTK pathway proteins, bypass pathways, and transcriptional remodeling. The authors conclude with a discussion of ongoing clinical trials aimed at overcoming resistance to KRAS inhibitors.

In an interim look at the SKYSCRAPER-01 study, investigators found tiragolumab plus atezolizumab didn’t meaningfully slow tumor progression compared to atezolizumab alone in patients with advanced, newly diagnosed non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Tiragolumab has now fallen short in two phase 3 lung cancer trials, having already missed its study objectives in advanced SCLC earlier this year.