IASLC World Conference on Lung Cancer

Fred R. Hirsch, MD, PhD, provides highlights of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer 18th World Conference on Lung Cancer, leading with his excitement for updated quality-of-life data from the PACIFIC trial of patients with locally advanced, unresectable stage III non–small cell lung cancer.

Immunotherapy is quickly becoming a mainstay in the frontline setting for the treatment of patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer.

David Carbone, MD, PhD, director of the James Thoracic Center, and professor of Medicine at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the effectiveness of different therapies to treat patients with lung cancer.

Treatment with the PD-1 inhibitor nivolumab showed promising results in patients with recurrent malignant pleural mesothelioma.

Determination of the PD-L1 status of a patient’s tumor has become increasingly important for informing the clinical decision whether to offer certain immunotherapeutic agents, making standardization of the tests and antibodies used to determine the PD-L1 status necessary to provide accurate and consistent results.

Durvalumab treatment in the second-line setting or beyond demonstrated clinical benefit and led to durable responses in heavily pretreated patients with locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer.

Treatment with the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab significantly improved overall survival compared to standard chemotherapy in patients with non–small lung cancer who progressed on platinum-based chemotherapy.

Patients with non–small cell lung cancer treated in the pembrolizumab arm of the KEYNOTE-024 trial experienced improved quality of life compared with patients who were treated with standard chemotherapy.

Heather Wakelee, MD, medical oncologist, Stanford University Medical Center, discusses a next-generation sequencing platform for the detection of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) EGFR T790M mutation in urine and plasma samples, during an interview at the IASLC 17th World Conference on Lung Cancer in Vienna, Austria.

Osimertinib (Tagrisso) reduced the risk of disease progression by 70% compared with a chemotherapy doublet in patients with EGFR T790M-mutant non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who progressed after first-line targeted therapy.

Frontline treatment with ceritinib (Zykadia) improved progression-free survival over standard chemotherapy in patients with ALK-rearranged non–small cell lung cancer.

Rosalyn Juergens, MD, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Oncology, Division of Medical Oncology, McMaster University, discusses the results of the IND.226 trial, in an interview at the IASLC 17th World Conference on Lung Cancer in Vienna, Austria.

Claire Verschraegen, MD, professor of Medical Oncology, University of Vermont Cancer Center, discusses the results of the JAVELIN Solid Tumor trial during an interview at the IASLC 17th World Conference on Lung Cancer in Vienna, Austria.

Treatment with icotinib more than doubled intracranial progression-free survival compared with whole brain irradiation combined with standard chemotherapy.

Findings from an efficacy update of patients participating in a study in the CheckMate series revealed that first-line nivolumab (Opdivo) demonstrated activity in advanced non–small cell lung cancer, and the addition of ipilimumab (Yervoy) resulted in enhanced activity, specifically in prolonged progression-free survival and higher objective response rates.

Treatment with first-line avelumab yielded promising clinical benefit and durable antitumor activity in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer.

Joshua Roth, PhD, assistant member, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, discusses the rationale behind the development of a novel risk-prediction algorithm in the context of screening patients for lung cancer. He discussed this during an interview at the IASLC 17th World Conference on Lung Cancer in Vienna, Austria.

Javier Zulueta, MD, head of the Pneumology Department, co-director, Lung Cancer Area, Clinica Universidad de Navarra, discusses the LuCED test, a non-invasive tool used to detect early stage lung cancer, during an interview at the IASLC 17th World Conference on Lung Cancer in Vienna, Austria.

While treatment with nivolumab (Opdivo) significantly improved overall survival over docetaxel in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer in the CheckMate-057 trial, an analysis of deaths occurring within 3 months of initiation of therapy showed numerically more deaths in the nivolumab arm.

Douglas Arenberg, MD, discusses preliminary findings of a screening study, and the critical importance of maintaining quality tobacco cessation practices in healthcare clinics.