Basic Cancer Info

One of the questions that comes up fairly frequently is what to make of a "mixed response" to systemic therapy: after several weeks or months of treatment, a scan shows some areas of known disease shrinking, but others are growing.  Why might this happen? What does it mean? And what should it lead us to do?

Folks here know that just about every day we discuss questions of what molecular marker test to order for lung cancer, how important it is, how it's done, what tissue is needed, and other very timely and practical issues in lung cancer.  These are questions that evolve every few months, as new research emerges with different markers.  

  Earlier this week, I provided a brief review of several highlighted posters at ASCO, along with some commentary to place them into context.  These posters represent only preliminary volleys of helpful information, describing findings from retrospective evaluations of outcomes from single institutions.  Nevertheless, they provide a meaningful starting point for what should become a richer conversation as we come to understand how best to use targeted therapies for very targeted populations.

   The main points I covered in my discussion were:

This is the last of six podcasts produced from the two hour program we did in partnership with the LUNGevity Foundation earlier this year in Santa Monica, at the start of the "Targeted Therapies in Lung Cancer" annual meeting.  This activity was comprised of some great panel discussions and brief presentations on tough but timely issues on the subject of "Molecular Markers in Advanced NSCLC: Who to Test and What to Test For?".  It featured guest faculty members Dr. Charlie Rudin from Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Alice Shaw from Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr.

While post-operative chemotherapy for early stage NSCLC is a well-established standard for relatively healthy patients with stage II or higher resected cancers, the question of whether adjuvant chemotherapy is more likely to help or hurt a patient remains more a matter of debate.

Here's part 5 of our Santa Monica program on Molecular Markers in Advanced NSCLC, closing in on the end of the activity.  In this podcast, my friend Dr.

Here's the next installment of the panel discussion on molecular markers from the webinar in Santa Monica with Drs. Charlie Rudin, Alice Shaw, David Spigel, and Glen Goss.  We continued our animated discussion on the promise as well as the pitfalls of broadening the use of molecular markers in routine practice of managing patients with advanced NSCLC.

A group of investigators at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA recently published a very newsworthy article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that argues that patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who are over 65 don't appear to benefit from the addition of Avastin (bevacizumab) to standard chemotherapy with carboplatin/Taxol (paclitaxel).

I'm happy to bring you now the second part of the Santa Monica webinar, developed with the LUNGevity Foundation, on "Molecular Markers in Advanced NSCLC: Who to Test and What to Test For?", in which I was joined by Drs.