Lung Cancer OncTalk — Pre-Webinar Learning Guide

An antibody–drug conjugate (ADC) works a bit like a Trojan horse. It has three main components:

1. The antibody, which serves as the “horse,” specifically targets a protein found on cancer cells.
2. The linker attaches the antibody to the drug.
3. The payload, which serves as the "hidden army", is the anticancer drug designed to kill the cancer cells.

Because the payload is delivered directly to the cancer cell rather than circulating freely throughout the body, it can be far more potent than drugs given systemically.

Bispecifics, or bispecific antibodies, are advanced immunotherapy drugs engineered to have two binding sites, allowing them to latch onto two different targets simultaneously, like a cancer cell and a T-cell, effectively acting as a bridge to bring immune cells to the cancer for destruction

The prefix “oligo–” means few. Oligometastatic (at diagnosis) Oligoprogression (during treatment)

There will be a discussion, “Studies in Oligometastatic NSCLC: Current Data and Definitions,” which will focus on what we now know about oligometastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

There has already been a lot of conversation about oligoprogression in patients on targeted therapies (TKIs). When cancer progresses in only a few spots during treatment, it has become standard practice to treat those limited areas with local therapies such as radiation.

This webinar, however, will address oligometastatic disease—when a patient has only one, two, or...metastases at the time of diagnosis. As the title suggests, the session will review the current data and definitions, so we’ll get to see how the understanding of oligometastatic disease has evolved since I first encountered the term.

On a personal note: as you can see from my bio, my husband had chem/rads in 2009 for a Pancoast tumor. At the end of treatment, a spine metastasis was found (separate from the primary). I had recently heard about “oligo” here on the forums, and I made sure he had that area radiated “to stabilize the spine”—but in my mind, it was about eliminating the last bit of cancer. Whatever the reasoning and whether or not it's the reason he is standing here in front of me as I write this, loading the dishwasher, I'm grateful. So I’m interested too in hearing about all that has been learned about oligometatases since it was first imagined having a place in NSCLC treatment. 

Radiation therapy is primarily a localized treatment, meaning it precisely targets a specific tumor or area of the body, unlike systemic treatments (like chemotherapy) that affect the whole body.

The above video is 2 years old.  Has anything changed, added? We'll see. 

Biomarkers are genetic mutations (like EGFR, ALK, KRAS, BRAF) or protein levels (like PD-L1) in tumor cells that help guide personalized treatment, especially NSCLC, directing patients to targeted therapies or immunotherapies, with common ones including EGFR, ALK, ROS1, BRAF, KRAS, MET, NTRK, RET, HER2, and PD-L1. These are found through comprehensive DNA/RNA/protein testing NGS (Next-Generation Sequencing) on tumor tissue or sometimes liquid biopsies (ctDNA) for diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment selection, moving beyond traditional chemo to precision medicine.