Dr. Wakelee on the Highlights of Adjuvant Therapy for Early Stage NSCLC

I’m proud to say that many years ago I sent Dr. Heather Wakelee from Stanford a set of my slides on post-operative therapy for early stage NSCLC — we’ ve been friends since we were both getting started in our careers.
Flash forward several years, and now she’s among the national leaders in the field of [...]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Podcast on Current Questions, Clinical Trials in Adjuvant Therapy for Resected NSCLC

GRACE is very happy to have the opportunity to present this podcast by Dr. Heather Wakelee, medical oncologist at renowned lung cancer expert at Stanford University Cancer Center.  The focus of this particular program, supported by an educational grant from GlaxoSmithKline, is on the most important research questions and clinical trials in the field of post-operative [...]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Interview with Dr. Sarita Dubey on Chemo for Early Stage NSCLC

Here’s an interview I did a few weeks before ASCO with Dr. Sarita Dubey, medical oncologist at the University of California at San Francisco.  This podcast covers a discussion we had about her views on the role of chemotherapy for patients with resected or resectable early stage NSCLC.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

MSH2 and Platinum Resistance in Early Stage NSCLC: It’s Not All ERCC1

In 2007 there was much excitement about the publication of a study by the researchers behind the landmark IALT adjuvant chemotherapy trial, which suggested that patients with early stage NSCLC could be divided into those who benefited greatly from cisplatin-based adjuvant chemotherapy and those who did not.  The marker that defined these patients was called [...]

Pre-Op vs. Post-Op Chemo Showdown: The NATCH Trial

Post-operative, or adjuvant, chemotherapy is a standard approach for higher risk patients with resected early stage NSCLC, based on several randomized trials that have been presented and published in the last few years that show a survival benefit from chemotherapy.   All of the trials that have shown a statistically significant survival benefit have given [...]

Risk/Benefit from Adjuvant Chemo for Early Stage NSCLC: Maturing Data Help Us Discriminate Likely Beneficiaries

Over the last 5 years, it’s become standard to consider and often recommend post-operative chemotherapy to patients with higher risk, early stage lung cancer in order to reduce the risk of it recurring and increase the cure rate. In that time, we’ve also seen that there are subgroups of patients who may be [...]

Doc, Am I Too Old for Chemo?

    The average age at which lung cancer is diagnosed in the US is 71. Would it be fair to say that at least half of those who are diagnosed with lung cancer are elderly? How do we define “old”? How does age impact the effect of chemotherapy?
Two decades ago, analysis of “older patients” who [...]

GRACEcast Audio Interview: Dr. Janessa Laskin on Adjuvant Chemotherapy

   Interview by medical oncologist Dr. Howard (Jack) West with fellow medical oncologist and lung cancer expert Dr. Janessa Laskin from the British Columbia Cancer Agency in Vancouver, BC, Canada on current standards and controversial topics in post-operative (adjuvant) chemotherapy for early stage, resected NSCLC.
[display_podcast]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

More Work with Neoadjuvant (Pre-Op) Chemotherapy: The SWOG Experience

   In my last post I described the results of the ChEST trial that showed a borderline statistically significant improvement in survival of patients who received cisplatin/gemcitabine chemotherapy for stage IB to IIIA NSCLC prior to surgery.  This study was very similar to another neoadjuvant chemotherapy trial, known as SWOG 9900, which also randomized patients [...]

Long-Term Risk with Adjuvant Chemo

   Over the past few years, the role of post-operative, also known as adjuvant, chemo has become increasingly accepted as a standard of care.  Several trials have shown an improvement in survival at about 5 years that is in the 5-15% range for recipients of chemo.  However, the evidence indicates that the people at higher [...]