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).

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.

I've written in the past about a class of proteins known as heat shock protein inhibitors as a targeted anticancer therapy, and there are a few that have been in clinical trials, including IPI-504 from Infinity Pharmaceuticals and STA-9090 from Synta Pharmaceuticals, with others also in development. The only trial that has actually been the subject of a completed clinical trial in NSCLC is IPI-504. Dr.

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).

The following is the edited transcript and figures from a webinar presentation made by Dr. Heather Wakelee, medical oncologist and Associate Professor at Stanford Cancer Center, on Never-Smokers and Gender Differences in Lung Cancer.

Introduction to Molecular Markers

Only a few years ago, oncologists saw lung cancer as divisible into small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), with very little relevance to any division beyond that point.

The third and final part of my conversation with Drs. Tom Hensing from North Shore Health System in Chicago and David Jackman from Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston covered a presentation of an Asian never-smoking woman with an advanced lung adenocarcinoma, the demographic picture most closely associated with potentially but not necessarily having an EGFR mutation or ALK rearrangement.

The second part of my conversation with Drs. Tom Hensing from North Shore Health System in Chicago and David Jackman from Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston covered a case of a relatively young, generally healthy woman diagnosed with a lung adenocarcinoma that turned out to be stage IV.