Core Concepts | GRACE :: Lung Cancer

Avastin with Chemo: Standard of Care for a Subset with Advanced NSCLC

Published October 14, 2006 | By Dr West | 1 Comment

Avastin (bevacizumab), an antiangiogenic agent that works by blocking the blood vessel stimulating factor vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), has already been FDA approved and commercially available for colon cancer, but it has now been approved by the FDA for first-line treatment of non-squamous NSCLC in combination with standard chemo of carboplatin and paclitaxel (taxol). This is because the combination of chemo and Avastin was found in a large randomized trial publsihed in the New England Journal of Medicine (abstract here) that the combination improved survival when combined with chemo alone for patients with advanced/metastatic NSCLC who hadn’t received chemo before. This trial, with nearly 900 patients, compared carboplatin and paclitaxel (Carbo/Taxol) alone to the same two-drug chemo with Avastin every three weeks, and people who went through six cycles of chemo and Avastin without having progression of disease went on to receive Avastin alone as maintenance therapy until their cancer showed progression:

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Posted in Anti-angiogenic agents, Core Concepts, First-line treatment, Lung Cancer, Metastatic/Recurrent NSCLC, First Line, Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC), Targeted therapies | Tagged Advanced NSCLC, Anti-angiogenic agents, avastin, Chemotherapy, Core Concepts, First-line treatment, Lung Cancer Issues, metastatic NSCLC, targeted therapy | 1 Comment

Defining Bronchioloalveolar Carcinoma (BAC): One End of a Spectrum

Published October 11, 2006 | By Dr West | 4 Comments

The clinical syndrome of BAC is characterized by spread primarily through the lungs, a higher proportion of never-smokers or light former smokers, a greater proportion of women, and often progresses more slowly than most other lung cancers. This clinical and radiographic (scans) scenario isn’t necessarily seen only with “pure BAC” under the microscrope from a biopsy, but rather can be a spectrum from pure BAC to part non-invasive BAC pattern and part invasive adenocarcinoma, and on the other end of the continuum is invasive adenocarcinoma, as shown in the illustration of how these appear under a microscope.