Drs. H. Jack West, Matthew Gubens, and Jyoti Patel, gathered post ASCO 2017 to discuss new information regarding lung cancer. In this video, the doctors discuss Sequencing Treatments for ALK+ Lung Cancer in a Crowded Field - Is there a place for Lorlatinib?

Dr. Luis Raez, MD FACP FCCP, Chief of Hem/Onc and Med. Dir. at Memorial Cancer Institute, and Clinical Associate Prof. of Medicine at FL International University discusses the Role for Immunotherapy for Patients with Driver Mutations.

Drs. Ben Solomon, Leora Horn, & Jack West review whether the data and clinical experience suggest any clinically significant differences among the first and second generation EGFR TKIs (Iressa, Tarceva, Gilotrif/Giotrif).

Drs. Leora Horn, Ben Solomon, & Jack West consider whether third generation EGFR TKIs, so active in patients with acquired resistance, might be best used prior to development of acquired resistance.

Despite the fact that many of the most anticipated ASCO abstracts are still being withheld until the meeting itself, there is certainly a lot of information in the released abstracts that provide a tantalizing preview and already hint at some important new conclusions. I'll try to provide some ongoing thoughts leading into the meeting coming up in two weeks.

One of the general rules in oncologist is that we typically use our most effective treatments first, and often early, though there are certainly exceptions. Women with metastatic breast cancer may have a higher response rate by receiving combination chemotherapy than single agent chemo, but when a gentle single drug chemotherapy or hormone therapy option will do very well and provide fewer side effects, that’s usually the approach we recommend until bigger guns are needed.

When I first described the developing work with the EGFR monoclonal antibody erbitux (cetuximab) two years ago (see prior post), I described a trial that was just getting started called SWOG 0536.