I recently had the honor of providing the expert commentary at the ASCO 2014 conference on three high impact lung cancer presentations, all on the subject of treatment options for molecularly defined populations (EGFR and ALK). I'll review the findings from these three abstracts and my perspective on each of these, starting with a very provocative presentation by Dr.

Dr. Geoffrey Oxnard of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute describes what research indicates may be more successful treatments for EGFR lung cancer patients.

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Tarceva (erlotinib) has greatly helped EGFR positive lung cancer patients, but eventually it stops working. Dr. Jonathan Goldman of UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center talks about the next generation EGFR inhibitors that may soon become available. February 2014.

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Every year, many of the most important developments in cancer care are presented at ASCO. This year, we've got what I think is a very important year in lung cancer, with several practice-changing results/.

Dr. Joel Neal of Stanford University Medical Center discusses the SELECT clinical trial which studied early stage non-small cell lung cancer patients and whether or not Tarceva (erlotinib) would prevent disease recurrence. February 2014.

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This is a slide presentation I did last week at a local conference, describing the steady, incremental improvements in survival with advanced/metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) that have occurred over the past 10-15 years.

Dr. Heather Wakelee of Stanford University Medical Center discusses whether or not cabozantinib - a drug already approved for thyroid cancer - can help patients with lung cancer. February 2014.

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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.

This past week, I saw a new patient who had just moved from another part of the country and needed long-term management of her high risk lung cancer.  A never-smoking Asian woman, she was found to have a stage IIIA lung cancer with "N2" mediastinal lymph nodes involving cancer in her mid-chest.

Almost exactly a year ago, I reported that the large MARQUEE trial of EGFR inhibitor Tarceva (erlotinib) plus either the MET inhibitor tivantinib (ARQ-197) or placebo as second or third line treatment for advanced NSCLC had been discontinued after a planned interim analysis revealed that it wouldn't be statistically significantly superior for overall survival (OS), the primary endpoint of the trial.