In Treatment

ALK positive lung cancer typically shows up in people who do not appear to be at high risk for the disease, so is this something that a lung cancer patient can pass on to his or her children? The doctors discuss what research shows on this issue.

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Who should be tested for ALK? How is ALK tested and how reliable are the results? In this video, the doctors discuss several issues surrounding the issue of testing for ALK, including what the medical guidelines suggest for testing lung cancer patients for genetic mutations.

Xalkori (crizotinib) was one of the fastest approved drugs in cancer treatment history because of its high efficacy levels in ALK positive lung cancer patients. In this video, the doctors discuss what took place as it raced to approval, as well as the limitations and side effects of the drug.

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The doctors discuss the history of ALK in lung cancer treatments and what the ALK rearrangement means for patients.

Here's the pdf for this presentation: Inherited T790M EGFR Mutation

How should we conduct trials of targeted therapies in lung cancer if large randomized trials require hundreds to thousands of patients, cost millions of dollars and years to conduct, but are extremely likely to have negative results and will require a more refined population with a prospectively defined target? We'll tackle that question in our upcoming #LCSM chat on Thursday, March 27th at 8 PM ET, 5 PM PT. Topics will include:

After a full morning, this conference has a nice feature during the lunch break of having the faculty all sit at separate tables so that attendees can ask questions of them. It’s nice to break through the silos that typically have the faculty sit and talk together, which may create a barrier to having these important conversations between the meeting attendees and the few on the faculty.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve attended and spoken at a lung cancer conference that I find to be particularly gratifying. Each fall, the Annual Personalized Therapies in Lung Cancer conference is held at a location in southern California. I wanted to provide a summary of what was covered at the last one, back in November, since it covered a broad range of the topics I think are most interesting here, using an interactive, case-based format integrated into the presentations.  

Here is a brief and basic summary of the concept of why we're concerned not only about the cancer we can see but the potential cancer we can't.

Since the introduction of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) for patients with lung cancer, we have seen a subset of patients do remarkably well, with dramatic and long lasting responses. Unfortunately, within a few months of those impressive responses, we learned that people invariably develop acquired resistance to these agents.