Basic Cancer Info

A few weeks ago I had the chance to speak with Dr. Tony Mok, who is a professor in the Department of Clinical Oncology at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong and the Chairman of the Hong Kong Cancer Therapy Society.

The third and last podcast from our discussions with Dr. Lecia Sequist, of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, covers the question & answer session that followed her excellent

Here's a continuation of the webinar content by Dr. Lecia Sequist, who is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

Recently, I described the rationale for targeting HER2 mutations in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Most of our experience with HER2 targeted therapy comes from studies in breast cancer. Now, I'd like to introduce you to BRAF, another novel target in NSCLC that is a central component in cell signalling, growth, and division.

In a terrific podcast done a year ago about molecular markers in lung cancer and moving beyond a "one size fits all approach", Dr.

A new article just coming out in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology by our friend Dr. Ross Camidge and colleagues from the University of Colorado suggests that patients who have an ALK rearrangement appear to often have a particularly long progression-free survival (PFS) with Alimta (pemetrexed).

The short answer is no. Since the introduction of the targeted agents that inhibit the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), both the oral EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) like Iressa (gefitinib) or Tarceva (Erbitux), and the monoclonal antibody therapies against EGFR like Erbitux (cetuximab) have been identified as often having a rash as a leading side effect.

A year ago, almost to the day, we presented an excellent podcast by Dr. Ross Camidge at the University of Colorado, describing the very new and promising work on the Pfizer investigational agent crizotinib for the subset (4-5% of patients with NSCLC) who have an ALK rearrangement.

This month's Journal of Thoracic Oncology includes a landmark article, written by a multidisciplinary group of lung cancer experts that features several of the leading lung cancer pathologists in the world, that is attempting to do no less than present a new categorization of the pathology of lung cancer, focusing primarily on adenocarcinomas, but also touching on other lung cancer subgroups.

This week, Drs.