Dr. Ross Camidge talks about a clinical trial that will test to see if the drug tesevatinib will work to kill cancer that has progressed in the brains of EGFR-mutant lung cancer patients. The trial is scheduled to begin in late 2015 or early 2016.

I met DC in April. He was 62 years old and was principal of a Montessori school. He had smoked a half pack a day for three years in college (which makes him a former/light smoker in my book) and was in fairly good health until the December before when he developed a cough. His cough didn't get better and thanks to all the talk about lung cancer screening, he requested a chest x-ray. The x-ray revealed a mass, which led to CT scanning.

Leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, also referred to as carcinomatous meningitis, is an uncommon but certainly not rare complication in lung cancer that I consider to be among the most dreaded. This occurs when cancer cells are in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) that bathe and cushion the brain and spinal cord, and cancer cells deposit on the meninges, the lining around the brain and spinal cord.