Closing the Gaps in NSCLC

To help us treat the disease representing the most common cause of cancer mortality worldwide—with more than half of patients presenting with stage IV disease at diagnosis—Dr. Jennifer Caudle speaks with Dr. Stephen Liu, who reviews the various recommended first-line systemic therapies for non-small cell lung cancer, the rationales behind single agents versus combinations, and strategies to guide patients through their treatment course.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors are now the standard of care for almost all of our patients with non-small cell lung cancer. And here to give us a look into how that’s impacted our patients and practices is Dr. Stephen Liu, Associate Professor of Medicine at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center of Georgetown University.

Lung cancer is known to be the deadliest and second most common cancer in men and women. Although there currently isn’t a cure, the last decade has shown great improvements and hope for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer, as Dr. Bobby Mahajan explains.

Since treatment outcomes vary greatly between lung cancer patients—even among those who are diagnosed at the same stages of disease—much research has been devoted to finding biomarkers that identify patients who are most likely to develop metastatic disease.

Here to walk us through a promising line of research with hopes of adding the first serum biomarker to the fight against non-small cell lung cancer is Dr. Tony Hu, professor and Weatherhead Presidential chair in Biotechnology Innovation at Tulane University Medical School.

One of the biggest blindspots for those who care for patients with lung cancer is not knowing whose disease is going to metastasize quickly and who, by extension, would benefit from the most aggressive treatments up front. But the entrance of better detection methods, such as biomarkers and assay tests, could change all of that, as Dr. Tony Hu explains.

After many decades of trying to improve the outcomes of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer, we may finally have the therapeutic approach that achieves that goal: maintenance therapy. Join Dr. Michael Shafique, an Assistant Professor of Thoracic Oncology at the Moffitt Cancer Center, as he reviews the data and keys to success behind maintenance therapy.

The therapies that have been approved for non-small cell lung cancer stimulate the immune system to attack cancer cells… But what happens when they do too good a job of that and stimulate the immune system to inflame other parts of the body as well? Dr. Michael Shafique from the Moffitt Cancer Center breaks down the most common adverse events to look for in patients with non-small cell lung cancer.

When looking at the non-small cell lung cancer landscape, we’re now seeing the emergence of several genetic markers that may have therapies linked to them, and one of those markers is the RET fusion that exists. Join Dr. Edward Kim as he gets us caught up on the investigational therapies targeting RET-mutated non-small cell lung cancer that just might end up in the clinic.

Thanks to recent research, we can now use a non-small cell cancer patient’s cancer type and genomic makeup to create targeted treatment plans. Joining Dr. Paul Doghramji to share what that approach looks like in practice is Dr. Edward Kim, the Chair of Solid Tumor Oncology and Investigational Therapeutics at the Levine Cancer Institute Atrium Health in Charlotte, North Carolina.

With newly approved therapies on the rise, the way we treat non-small cell lung cancer patients with a RET gene rearrangement may be evolving. That’s why it’s so important to test for RET mutations in patients with non-small cell lung cancer, as oncologist Dr. Deepa Rangachari explains.