Plenary Session: Lung Cancer in Never Smokers

Continued from part 1 Dr. West: You have a huge portion of your patients who have an EGFR mutation and we know that over time patients develop acquired resistance. So how do you approach the patients who have a great response initially, have a known EGFR mutation, and then you see that slipping away at slow progression? Do you continue the EGFR inhibitor? Do you add something to it? Do you change the dose? How do you approach that?

Although the responses we see with a targeted therapy like the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) oral tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) for patients with the precise target, an activating mutation in the EGFR gene, has redefined our hopes and expectations about what is possible to achieve for at least some patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), nearly all of these patients develop a resistance to these agents at some point months or years after often having a very significant response to one of these agents.