The Advent of More Potent ALK Inhibitors

Clinical Pearls

Alice T. Shaw, MD, PhD, an attending physician in the Center for Thoracic Cancers at Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses the advent of more potent ALK inhibitors and the treatment of ALK-positive lung cancer patients with crizotinib.

• The treatment of these patients is more complicated now, with the advent of more potent ALK inhibitors
• New ALK inhibitors are potent in patients both resistant and naive to crizotinib
• At a large cancer center, the option exists to start crizotinib as standard therapy or consider a clinical trial with a next-generation ALK inhibitor
• In the community setting, standard procedure would be to start a newly-diagnosed ALK-positive patient on crizotinib