Lung Cancer: ASCO 2012 Wrap-Up

Continuing to write about how lung cancer fared at the ASCO this year, I plan to list out some of the important findings that I hope would give CureTalk readers a perspective on what is on the anvil as far as lung cancer is concerned.

• PARAMOUNT trial overall survival analysis presented by Dr. Paz-Azres, showed that NSCLC patients who received pemetrexed as maintenance after 4 cycles of Cisplatin/pemetrexed showed an overall survival rate of 16.9 months when compared to the 14 months of the placebo group.
• Dr. Lilenbaum showed trial results which indicated that carboplatin and pemetrexed in status 2 patients was more effective in patients administered pemetrexed alone in terms of overall survival and progression free survival.
• In the LUX Lung-3 trial, Afatinib proved to be effective against EGFR mutant lung cancer and was better than cisplatinum/pemetrexed as frontline treatment with progression free survival rate of 11 months in comparison of 7 months. The overall survival rate is awaited.
• As far as lung cancer is concerned, the PD-1 drug was among the most exciting. The drug showed low side effects and  introduced the immune system/immunotherapy as the new target for non-small cell lung cancer.
• Early clinical trials have opened up potential drugs – selumetinib and docetaxel was found to be effective against KRAS mutation positive adenocarcinomas.
• In the TAILOR study, docetaxel was found to be more effective in patients with NSCLC with no EGFR gene mutations.

There were others too…

• A study showed that FDG-PET scanning was not as sensitive or specific as thought.
• ROS1 ALK mutant showed a response rate of 57% to crizotinib, which has already been approved by FDA.
• RET ALK mutant subgroup may respond to Sorafenib and Sunitinib.
• Paul Paik at Memorial Sloan-Kettering has identified FGFR1 amplification in Squamous NSCLC and these are entering clinical trials.
• P14 kinase alterations and P10 alternations have been found to be common and recurrent in Squamous NSCLC, thus these alterations can be targeted for therapy.

Lots of going one and lots for hope. The PD-1 drugs in particular holds a lot of promise and keep reading for more info on the same.