Dr. Greg Riely from Memorial Sloan-Kettering notes how he feels molecular marker results for patients with earlier stage lung cancer can potentially be valuable.

[powerpress]

Dr. Heather Wakelee from Stanford University discusses the open question of whether patients with resectable or locally advanced NSCLC should have testing for molecular markers, as well as how we might use this information in clinical practice.

 [powerpress]

The next live webinar to be done through the partnership of GRACE and LUNGevity Foundation will be on the timely subject of using molecular features of a resected non-small cell lung cancer in order to better understand the probability of the cancer recurring. This will be on November 14th, 7 PM Eastern/4 PM Pacific, and will hope to answer the question, "Could these molecular features improve upon current staging efforts to help us refine our recommendations of which patients should receive post-operative chemotherapy in order to reduce the chance of recurrence?"

Here is Dr. Neal's summary from the ASCO 2012 Lung Cancer Highlights program of the SELECT Trial, which he led and presented, of adjuvant (post-operative) Tarceva (erlotinib) for patients with resected early stage EGFR mutation-positive NSCLC.

Here are the 5 presentations at ASCO in stage I-III NSCLC and small cell lung cancer that I think are most interesting and relevant.  You'll note that several are "negative" trials -- blockbusters are hard to come by here -- but even trials that tell us what not to do are important.   And there are some hints of new approaches that could improve outcomes for patients.

When I met my first lung cancer patient in medical school, I found it difficult to grasp the wording of the diagnosis non-small cell lung cancer (and its associated acronym, NSCLC). Why was the diagnosis named so specifically for what it is not, rather than what it is?

Here's the first of a series of posts on key presentations on lung cancer from ASCO 2010, as reviewed by myself and Dr. Nate Pennell of our faculty here several weeks ago. The first topic we covered was the very interesting if troubling Canadian BR.19 trial of post-operative Iressa (gefitinib) vs. placebo, as summarized by Dr. Pennell. Dr.

As I mentioned in my last post on the recent results on pre-operative (neoadjuvant) chemotherapy, the results of this work failed to achieve statistical significance but did appear to be associated with a degree of benefit comparable to the magnitude of benefit seen with post-operative (adjuvant) chemotherapy, but the neoadjuvant trials were smaller and therefore underpowered.

It's been a few months since I sat down with my friend, Dr. Nasser Hanna, a great lung cancer expert from Indiana University, and also a friend in the field. Those of you who have been following GRACE content for a while may have come across his name: he's led a few of the more important trials that are part of our current core knowledge in lung cancer now, such as the

Introduction to Adjuvant Therapy: Why More than Just Surgery?