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.

Several weeks ago, we were fortunate enough to have Dr. Mary Pinder (alternately referred to as Pinder-Schenck) from the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa join as the first of two speakers reviewing highlights in thoracic oncology from ASCO. She covered several key presentations in small cell lung cancer, early stage non-small cell lung cancer, and mesothelioma. Here's the audio and video versions of the podcast, along with the transcript and figures (a zip file to decompress, since it was too big in unzipped form to upload) for this program:

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Though there are many presentations to discuss in the wake of ASCO, we'll need to pace ourselves on these. I and some of the other faculty members will offer thoughts on some of these in the coming weeks, and we also have our upcoming post-ASCO review on June 23rd (click here to learn more and sign up for this free online program).

A few weeks ago, I gave a talk at a Seattle non-profit called Cancer Lifeline, at which I described some of the highlights of current lung cancer treatment and the direction of ongoing research. I recorded that lecture (which does include some stray sounds in the background), and I thought it would be helpful to make it available to people online.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Toni Wozniak, Moedical Oncologist and lung cancer expert at the Barbara A. Karmanos Cancer Center at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. We covered several topics, including SCLC, the subject of this podcast. It is an audio interview but includes a few figures that are synchronized with the audio on the video version, or you can download the pdf of the figures and just follow along with the audio.

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Last year, I had the occasion in two prior posts (here and here) to highlight a new agent called amrubicin that is being studied in relapsed SCLC. At an ASCO conference where most of the news in SCLC was disappointing, amrubin studies again appeared promising.

I wrote about the drug amrubicin in a prior post, after it demonstrated provocative activity in clinical trials out of Japan that were presented at ASCO 2007. Additional result on amrubicin in previously treated ED-SCLC were presented at a NYC meeting last week, and it's continued to look very encouraging in a clinical setting in which we could really use more options.

Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) has been a very challenging disease for patients and physicians, and unfortunately one in which our improvements in treatment have been few and far between. In fact, a recent educational session at ASCO was titled "Small Cell Lung Cancer: What's New Since 1978?". The decreasing frequency of SCLC has also made it increasingly difficult to study, but even when the studies are completed, many emerging potential therapies have proven to have no benefit.