Just Diagnosed

Drs. Leora Horn, Ben Solomon, & Jack West review the potential rationale and possible limitations of combining different immuntherapy strategies with one another.

Dr. Jack West introduces the question of whether third generation EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors osimertinib and rociletinib should be used as first line therapy rather than for acquired resistance, including discussing key clinical trials on the topic.

Drs. Leora Horn, Ben Solomon, & Jack West assess whether clinical factors such as being a never-smoker or having a driver mutation (EGFR, ALK, etc.) reliably predict minimal benefit from immunotherapy agents.

Dr. Eddie Garon, UCLA, reviews the controversial question of whether PD-L1 expression is a reliable enough biomarker to be used to select patients to receive or not receive immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy in lung cancer.

Drs. Leora Horn, Ben Solomon, & Jack West consider the factors that might lead us to favor testing for PD-L1 at initial workup of a patient with advanced NSCLC or after progression.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors are now becoming approved and commercially available for patients with previously treated advanced NSCLC. Dr. Eddie Garon, medical oncologist at UCLA, summarizes key data and explains their current role in treatment.

Drs. Ben Solomon, Leora Horn, & Jack West consider how valuable testing for PD-L1 expression is in clinical practice and whether it should be integrated in clinical decision making around immunotherapies.

Dr. Ben Levy discusses two trials that are trying to determine if immunotherapy can help lung cancer patients with earlier stage disease. Click here for information about the PACIFIC trial. The lung cancer vaccine trial will begin in early 2016.

Dr. Nathan Pennell discusses ALCHEMIST, an NCI-sponsored clinical trial looking at whether targeted post-op (adjuvant) therapy for patients with a driver mutation such as EGFR mutation or ALK rearrangement improves survival.

Drs. Leora Horn, Ben Solomon, & Jack West consider whether the data suggest that the better tested PD1 and PD-L1 inhibitors have differences in activity or tolerability or are essentially interchangeable.