One of the more eagerly awaited clinical trials in lung cancer this year is the PointBreak study that tried to identify whether an Alimta (pemetrexed)-based first line and maintenance chemo strategy is significantly superior to a well-established standard first line and maintenance therapy regimen.  Specifically, this trial randomized 939 chemo-naive patients wi

Dr. Mark Socinski covered the TAILOR trial, an Italian study directly comparing second line Taxotere (docetaxel) to Tarceva (erlotinib) in advanced NSCLC patients without an EGFR mutation, in the ASCO Lung Cancer Highlights program.

Here is the second part of Dr. Socinski's summary from our ASCO Highlights in Lung Cancer program, covering an important presentation by Dr.

The annual conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in late spring is the biggest event in the cancer world, where more of the big trials are presented than at any other time all year.  In the lung cancer world, it’s looking like this one won’t be a blockbuster but will have some promising and interesting findings to dis

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).

This is the first of a series of podcasts from the two hour special webinar we did in partnership with the LUNGevity Foundation at the Santa Monica "Targeted Therapies in Lung Cancer" meeting several weeks ago.  There, I was privileged to be joined by four excellent guest faculty members -- Dr.

The FLEX trial, a European study of cisplatin/Navelbine (vinorelbine) with or without the monoclonal antibody against EGFR Erbitux (cetuximab), was a technically positive study that was initially reported at ASCO 2008. However, showing an improvement in median survival of just 1.2 months, most oncologists came away feeling that the trial illustrated the difference between a statistically vs.

Here's the second talk from our recent webinar, partnering with LUNGevity Foundation to cover the ASCO Highlights in Lung Cancer, and this talk followed after

The Importance of Identifying Molecular Markers in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer To understand the importance of molecular markers in the current and future treatment of lung cancer, one should first understand how lung cancer was classified up until the beginning of this decade. Pathologists would look at a sample of a patient's lung tumor under a microscope, and then make a judgment of whether the cells represented small cell lung cancer (SCLC) or non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

In the last decade, the treatment of NSCLC has evolved very significantly, and one of the leading ways has been that we've gone from having no established role for treatment after initial, first line therapy to having multiple agents with a proven benefit. It's worth clarifying that as maintenance therapy is increasingly being considered as an option after first line therapy, a distinction between this and second line therapy.