Any new medical trials after Tagrisso - 1294141

Hi lamn,

I hope your mom does well on tagrisso for a very long time. It's great to say that yes in the FLAURA trial tagrisso demonstrated efficacy in the brain. Most anti cancer treatment do not penetrate the blood brain barrier. Most lung cancer specialists want to give tagrisso first a try to see if it shrinks or eliminates brain mets before having to try radiation. However if the brain met is causing symptoms then radiation may be the better, quicker, and surer choice.

It's difficult to say what the next step should be. For one thing, by the time your mom needs another treatment there may be more options available. Mutations form during treatment and are cancer's way of working around treatments. This is known as acquired resistance and research is working to address these mutations. Your mom may be a good fit for a promising trial drug, if she tests positive for PD-L1 expression immunotherapy would be a choice (those with egfr + don't usually benefit from immunotherapy), and chemotherapy can be very effective and single agents like alimta may have few if any side effects and work for very long time.

Best of luck to your mom,
Janine

Lam,

If the weight loss of due to the cancer then shrinking the tumor burden should help bring her appetite back. If she needs a little help until then protein meal substitutes can be very helpful, like ensure plus. Small meals/portions are more appetizing when you don't feel like eating. Tastes can change so introducing new options may work. Eat what sounds and looks good is helpful too, like ice cream. Cooking with bacon and bacon grease for those who eat bacon can attract many people to the table. There are also drugs that help some people if weight loss becomes a problem. Keep an eye out for sores/rashes around and in the mouth from tagrisso (though tagrisso seems to have fewer rash issues than tarceva) and treat asap.

Cyberknife/radio surgery is able to focus radiation to only the tumor without damaging healthy tissue so it's given at a higher dose (only 2 or 4 treatments). Cyberknife can be given to brain mets one at a time as needed where wbr can only be given once maybe twice plus wbr causes more damage to healthy brain tissue.

Janine

Let me add, cyberknife and gamma knife are types of stereotactic radiosurgery. It is being used also in other non brain tumors that are relatively small such as mets arising from acquired resistance. Dr. Weiss explains here, http://cancergrace.org/lung/2016/03/07/gcvl_lu_local_therapy_limited_ac…

Hi Lam,

So far CAR-T therapy has shown some good results in blood-based cancers such as lymphoma, but though there is some clinical trial work in solid tumors such as lung cancer, it's too soon to say that this therapy will be effective for lung cancer patients.

JimC
Forum moderator