Lung Cancer
Barcelona, Spain—Treatment with ceritinib (Zykadia) led to excellent responses in patients with ALK-positive non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and brain metastases, according to results of the ASCEND-7 clinical trial, which enrolled only patients with ALK-positive NSCLC with newly diagnosed or progressive brain metastases.
On January 29, 2020, Eli Lilly announced that the FDA granted priority review to their New Drug Application for selpercatinib (LOXO-292) for the treatment of patients with advanced RET fusion-positive non–small-cell lung cancer, RET-mutant medullary thyroid cancer, and RET fusion-positive thyroid cancer. The FDA is aiming to provide its decision on the approval of selpercatinib in the third quarter of 2020.
Barcelona, Spain—Osimertinib (Tagrisso), a third-generation EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), extended overall survival (OS) compared with older TKI EGFR inhibitors, including gefitinib (Iressa) or erlotinib (Tarceva), as first-line treatment for patients with advanced non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and EGFR mutation in the phase 3 clinical trial called FLAURA.
Barcelona, Spain—The immunotherapy combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) plus ipilimumab (Yervoy) improved overall survival (OS) compared with chemotherapy as first-line treatment in patients with advanced non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and PD-L1 expression ≥1%, according to results of CheckMate 227. The OS was also improved with nivolumab plus ipilimumab compared with chemotherapy in the total study population and in patients whose tumors had low (<1%) PD-L1 expression.
Chicago, IL—Treatment with the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) dramatically improved 5-year survival for patients with advanced non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) compared with expected survival in the preimmunotherapy era, according to the 5-year follow-up data from the phase 1b KEYNOTE-001 clinical trial. The study was presented at ASCO 2019 and was published simultaneously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
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Treatment with the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) dramatically improved 5-year survival for patients with advanced non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) compared with expected survival in the preimmunotherapy era.
Expanded data from an early phase 1/2 clinical trial showed that treatment with repotrectinib, an investigational tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) with potent selectivity against tumors with ROS1 rearrangement, induced a response in 9 of 11 patients with TKI-naïve, ROS1-fusion–positive non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Lung and bronchus cancer, the second most common form of cancer, accounts for 13.5% of all new cancer cases in the United States. In 2018 alone, lung cancer was newly diagnosed in 234,030 individuals and accounted for 154,050 deaths. In fact, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related mortality in men and women, and is responsible for more than 25% of all cancer deaths. The 5-year survival rate for patients whose lung cancer has spread regionally (to regional lymph nodes) is 29.7%, but that survival rate is only 4.7% for patients with distant metastases.
Lung and bronchus cancer is the second most common form of cancer in the United States. In 2018, lung cancer was newly diagnosed in 234,030 individuals, representing 13.5% of all new cancer cases. Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer mortality in men and women, accounting for more than 25% of all cancer deaths, which translated to 154,050 deaths in 2018. The relative 5-year survival rate for metastatic lung cancer is only 4.7%.
