*November 2022*
Osimertinib (Tagrisso) remains the preferred first-line therapy for patients with EGFR-mutated non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), Zosia Piotrowska, MD, MHS, told her audience at the 17th Annual New York Lung Cancers Symposium®.1
However, for those with classic EGFR mutations, exon 19 deletions and L858R substitutions, she believes the day is fast approaching when physicians will add chemotherapy to first-line treatment with the EGFR TKI based on circulating tumor (ct)DNA results. Piotrowska, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an attending physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, noted that there is subgroup of persister cells that osimertinib cannot eradicate that chemotherapy may be able to target. Furthermore, reserving chemotherapy is suboptimal because many patients never proceed to second-line treatment.
“We know that chemotherapy is an effective strategy for these patients,” she said. “So perhaps they’ll do better if we give them both up front.” Read more.
