Just Diagnosed

Drs. H. Jack West, Matthew Gubens, and Jyoti Patel, gathered post ASCO 2017 to discuss new information regarding lung cancer. In this video, the doctors discuss A Practice Change for ALK+ Lung Cancer Patients, Alecensa for First Line Treatment.

Dr. Luis Raez, MD FACP FCCP, Chief of Hem/Onc and Med. Dir. at Memorial Cancer Institute, and Clinical Associate Prof. of Medicine at FL International University discusses Liquid Biopsies for Broad Next Generation Sequencing Testing.

Dr. Luis Raez, MD FACP FCCP, Chief of Hem/Onc and Med. Dir. at Memorial Cancer Institute, and Clinical Associate Prof. of Medicine at FL International University discusses Liquid Biopsies for EGFR.

Dr. Luis Raez, MD FACP FCCP, Chief of Hem/Onc and Med. Dir. at Memorial Cancer Institute, and Clinical Associate Prof. of Medicine at FL International University discusses Multiple Immunotherapy Agents.

Dr. Luis Raez, MD FACP FCCP, Chief of Hem/Onc and Med. Dir. at Memorial Cancer Institute, and Clinical Associate Prof. of Medicine at FL International University discusses evolving options in first line treatment of ALK-Positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Dr. Luis Raez, MD FACP FCCP, Chief of Hem/Onc and Med. Dir. at Memorial Cancer Institute, and Clinical Associate Prof. of Medicine at FL International University discusses First Line Immunotherapy for Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer NSCLC.

Dr. Luis Raez, MD FACP FCCP, Chief of Hem/Onc and Med. Dir. at Memorial Cancer Institute, and Clinical Associate Prof. of Medicine at FL International University discusses First Line Combinations, Immunotherapy with Chemotherapy.

Over the next few days, about 30,000 oncologists and other cancer care professionals, along with a growing number of patient advocates, are converging on Chicago for the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual conference, the biggest cancer meeting of the year. There is far too much happening for people to be able to see everything, but fortunately people will be providing summaries on Twitter (follow me at @JackWestMD), various blogs (I'm writing commentary for Medscape), and lots of online and print news outlets.

The FDA just approved a new therapy for the approximately 4% of patients with NSCLC who have the molecular marker known as an ALK rearrangement. The agent Zykadia (ceritinib), a "second generation" ALK inhibitor that is more effective than Xalkori (crizotinib) in lab models of ALK-positive NSCLC, and the new approval was for Zykadia as first line treatment for ALK-positive lung cancer, a setting where we have historically favored Xalkori since it was approved in 2011. .

1. Christine M. Walko, Pharm.D., discusses how advancements in technology have improved the quality, cost and turnaround time for assessing genetic mutations in tumor tissue, and how this has helped to translate precision medicine into standard clinical practice.