I was reminded of the important topic of occult N2 NSCLC by a comprehensive review that just came out in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology (abstract here) by a friend, thoracic surgeon Frank Detterbeck, who leads the thoracic oncology program at Yale.

Several members have asked about the appropriate dose of avastin (bevacizumab), which is really still a controversial subject. It's worth exploring how we got here and where we are now.

While other doses of avastin have been used with other tumor types, the first study in lung cancer that used avastin tested two different doses, 7.5 mg/kg or 15 mg/kg combined with carboplatin and taxol (paclitaxel). This work was done at Vanderbilt Univ. Cancer Center by Dr. David Johnson and colleagues, and Dr. Laskin worked with them for a couple of years. This study had the following design:

During the entire time I've been commenting on the most evidence-based and commonly used agents for previously treated patients, I've focused on taxotere, alimta, and tarceva (example in prior post here). In fact, that overlooks an agent that has actually been tested in a large study and been found to have similar activity to taxotere, but it remains pretty much an afterthought.

Just last week I described in a prior post the news that a large trial of Nexavar (sorafenib) had been reported as negative in first line advanced NSCLC, and with some evidence of an increased risk of death on the novel agent in combination with chemo in the subset of patients with squamous cell NSCLC.

I'll get back to the storyline of our growing understanding of the differences of individuals based on pharmacogenomics very soon. But I wanted to give people some breaking news that just came out.

While the differences in anticipated clinical benefits from EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors like tarceva and iressa are well known (summarized in prior post), less well appreciated is the potentially significant differences in results with garden variety standard chemotherapy.

People who have been following my comments know that I am often questioning the wisdom of surgery in patients who don't fit the usual criteria for resection, which is most commonly pursued in stage I and II NSCLC and is often considered an option for some patients with stage IIIA NSCLC. To provide a very quick review of NSCLC staging, it's a combination of three factors:

1) Tumor (T) stage -- from 1 to 4, going from smallest and easiest to remove to hardest or largest to remove

2) Node (N) stage -- from 0 to 3, going from none to further distances from the main tumor

Member Sandra recently asked the question that several other people have asked in one form or another: how do we choose among the treatment options for second line therapy in NSCLC. I've covered in several posts and a huge number of responses in the Q&A Forum the leading options we generally consider for second line therapy for NSCLC.

There's been several discussions about the potential value of maintenance therapy after the initial chemotherapy for SCLC; I've discussed this subject in a prior post, in which I focused on chemo -- while the results haven't been strong enough to lead to a change in standard practice, at least one trial showed a strong trend in the right direction.

In the Q&A forums recently, members Jianming and Neil introduced us to the novel agent XL647, in clinical trials now, but I figured it was worth me collecting more background and providing a more thorough background. XL647 is an oral small molecular that inhibits multiple tyrosine kinases, receptors on cells that trigger cascades of activity in the cells, thereby leading to tumor development and growth.