LUNG CANCER

Tumor mutational burden, also referred to as tumor mutational load, is a measure of the number of mutations in tumor tissue taken from a patient. Recently, several studies have been investigating the utility of TMB as a biomarker to predict response to therapy in patients with non–small cell lung cancer.

According to topline findings, the phase III CheckMate-331 trial of nivolumab monotherapy for patients with small cell lung cancer who relapsed following platinum-based chemotherapy failed to meet its primary endpoint of improved overall survival compared with the standard topotecan or amrubicin.

Justin F. Gainor, MD, assistant professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses the treatment landscape of oncogenic driver-positive NSCLC.

Alexander Drilon, MD, clinical director of Early Drug Development Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the evolving role of immune-checkpoint blockade in NSCLC.

Lung and bronchus cancer are the leading causes of cancer-related deaths in the United States and will be responsible for an estimated 154,050 American deaths in 2018. An estimated 234,030 new cases of lung and bronchus cancer will be diagnosed in 2018, which represents 13.5% of all new cancer diagnoses in the United States.

Durvalumab (Imfinzi) demonstrated an improvement in overall survival compared with placebo in patients with stage III, unresectable non&ndash;small cell lung cancer who have not progressed following chemoradiotherapy, according to updated findings from the PACIFIC trial recently&nbsp;presented at the 19th World Conference on Lung Cancer and simultaneously published in the <em>New England Journal of Medicine</em>.

Infographic: Here, we share the top 5 oncology news stories we reported this week, including the most recent FDA updates and expert insights on key developments in the field.

In an interview with <em>Targeted Oncology</em>, Geoffrey Oxnard, MD, discussed the promise of genome-wide sequencing in cfDNA.

A look back at all the&nbsp;FDA news&nbsp;that happened in the month of&nbsp;September 2018, including several new approvals, priority reviews, a breakthrough therapy designation, and more, in a variety of cancer types.

Rachel Sanborn, MD, recently discussed the treatment options and considerations she makes when treating patients with non&mdash;small cell lung cancer. Sanborn, director of Thoracic Oncology, Providence Cancer Center, explained her treatment decisions based on 2 case scenarios during a <em>Targeted Oncology </em>live case-based peer perspectives presentation.

Second-line treatment with the combination of lurbinectedin (Zepsyre; PM1183) and doxorubicin&nbsp;demonstrated significant clinical activity in patients with small cell lung cancer, especially when excluding refractory patients, according to findings presented&nbsp;at the 19th World Conference on Lung Cancer in Toronto, Canada.

Dacomitinib has been approved by the FDA for the treatment of previously untreated patients with metastatic non&ndash;small cell lung cancer with&nbsp;<em>EGFR&nbsp;</em>exon 19 deletion or exon 21 L858R substitution mutations.

Pontchartrain Cancer Center was founded in 2005 to serve an area of Louisiana that lacked the necessary resources for cancer care. This community cancer center, with 2 locations in Southeast Louisiana, accommodates any patient to walk through its doors, filling a major unmet need for the community in this rural area.

Adding&nbsp;atezolizumab (Tecentriq) to standard carboplatin and etoposide significantly prolonged survival in patients with&nbsp;extensive-stage small cell lung cancer compared with the chemotherapy regimen alone in the frontline setting, according to results from the&nbsp;IMpower133 study.

Adult patients with&nbsp;<em>ALK</em>-positive, locally advanced or metastatic non&ndash;small cell lung cancer who had not received a prior ALK inhibitor experienced a more than 50% reduction in the risk of&nbsp;disease progression or death with treatment with brigatinib (Alunbrig), compared with&nbsp;the first-line standard of care, crizotinib.

Patients with&nbsp;<em>ROS1</em> fusion&ndash;positive non&ndash;small cell lung cancer had clinically meaningful and durable benefit across multiple doses of repotrectinib (TPX-0005), according to interim findings from the ongoing phase I/II TRIDENT-1 study,&nbsp;presented at the 19th World Conference on Lung Cancer.

Promising efficacy was seen with the novel targeted therapy poziotinib in patients with metastatic, heavily pretreated&nbsp;<em>EGFR&nbsp;</em>and&nbsp;<em>HER2 </em>exon 20 mutant non&ndash;small cell lung cancer, with a best response rate to date of 55%, according to phase II study results presented at the 19th World Conference on Lung Cancer.

HER2 mutations have been identified as another oncogenic driver in the growing list of actionable targets in non&ndash;small cell lung cancer. Based on a mounting body of evidence on the impact of HER2 mutations in lung cancer and the growing focus on personalized medicine, the HER2 receptor has gained focus as a potential target for precision medicine treatments for patients with NSCLC.

A Chemoimmunotherapeutic Approach to Nondriver NSCLC

<em>Targeted Oncology</em>, a print and digital resource that offers content and expert opinions on precision medicine in oncology, launched its second &ldquo;Expert Perspective: Virtual Tumor Board&rdquo; on Wednesday, September 12. The Virtual Tumor Board is a video-editorial board discussion that features key opinion leaders from a specific oncological field. This episode will focus on non&ndash;small cell lung cancer.

A&nbsp;supplemental biologics license application for pembrolizumab (Keytruda) has been granted a priority review designation by the FDA for the frontline treatment of patients&nbsp;with locally advanced or metastatic nonsquamous or squamous non&ndash;small cell lung cancer with a PD-L1 expression level of &ge;1% and no <em>EGFR</em> or <em>ALK</em> genomic tumor aberrations.