Dr. Luis Raez, MD FACP FCCP, Chief of Hematology/Oncology and Medical Director at Memorial Cancer Institute, and Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at Florida International University joined GRACE to discuss second-line therapies for advanced NSCLC.

For our 19th video in the GRACE Spanish Lung Cancer Library, Dr. Brian Hunis, joined GRACE to discuss the basics of Lung Cancer for Spanish-speaking patients and caregivers. In this video Dr. Hunis discusses second line therapy for NSCLC patients who are ALK positive.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors are now becoming approved and commercially available for patients with previously treated advanced NSCLC. Dr. Eddie Garon, medical oncologist at UCLA, summarizes key data and explains their current role in treatment.

We've covered the question of maintenance therapy for lung cancer in many posts over the past 5-6 years as it has evolved from a concept with little evidence to a standard of care, but it is difficult to get a good summary of the big picture. This presentation is my attempt to distill the field into the most important principles.

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.

One of the trials presented at the Chicago Multidisciplinary Symposium in Thoracic Oncology last month was the TITAN trial, one of a pair of studies conducted in Europe to test the oral EGFR inhibitor Tarceva (erlotinib) in patients with chemotherapy pre-treated advanced NSCLC. The other trial, SATURN, was designed to test Tarceva as a maintenance therapy vs.

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.

It was nearly three years ago when the results of a randomized phase III trial of the chemotherapy agent Javlor (vinflunine) compared with standard second line Taxotere (and its proven survival benefit in previously treated advanced NSCLC), both drugs given IV every three weeks.

When most oncologists think about the EGFR inhibitor tarceva (erlotinib), they think of the uncommon but very memorable patient who has a spectacular response within a few weeks of starting it, then continues to do well on it for a year or more. These patients are most commonly never-smokers, often Asian, and almost invariably have an adenocarcinoma. In contrast, many oncologists perceive there to be little to no value in giving tarceva to patients with squamous tumors, and many don’t even bother to offer it to these patients.