Treatments

*February 2020* Ravi Salgia, MD, PhD, is the Arthur & Rosalie Kaplan Endowed Chair in Medical Oncology and the associate director for clinical sciences at City of Hope’s Comprehensive Cancer Center. His many decades of research in MET and other oncogenic drivers has helped further lung cancer research and patient…

*March 2020* The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation for JNJ-6372 to Janssen Pharmaceutical, a Johnson & Johnson Company. NJ-6372 is an investigational treatment for metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (mNSCLC) with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) Exon 20 insertion mutations. It has been approved…

*March 2020* Osimertinib (Tagrisso) is the standard frontline therapy for patients with metastatic, EGFR-mutant non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), and although the drug can provide years of benefit, more options beyond chemotherapy are needed for those who progress on this treatment, according to Erin M. Bertino, MD. Read more.

*January 2020* Among 62 patients who met eligibility critieria, histologic transformation, primarily squamous transformation, was identified in 15% of first-line osimertinib cases and 14% of later-line cases. Nineteen percent (5/27) of patients treated with first-line osimertinib had off-target genetic resistance (2 MET amplification, 1 KRAS mutation, 1 RET fusion, and…

*February 2020* Positive news for METex14 mutated NSCLC patients. Note this is also good news for patients with EGFR-Independent acquired resistance after osimertinib. (Mesenchymal epithelial transition (MET) amplification is a common mechanism of resistance to EGFR-TKI treatment, bserved in ~20-30% of EGFR-mutant NSCLC after osimertinib.) Reuters reports the FDA has…

*January 2020* Researchers in the Center for Cancer Research have found that circulating lymphocytes can be stimulated in the laboratory to generate cells that can recognize TP53 gene mutations. Mutations to the TP53 gene are found in about 40 percent of all cancers, making this process a potentially significant step…

*December 2019* Checkpoint inhibitors come with a huge caveat: They only help a small subset of patients. Doctors struggle to predict who these patients are and—just as important—who they aren't. Results from a new study published Dec. 19 in the journal JCI Insight could help improve those forecasts. Read more.

*January 2020* Oncoprex in combination with osimertinib (Tagrisso) received fast track designation from the FDA to treat patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with EFGR mutations that progressed after treatment with osimertinib alone, according to Genprex, Inc., the immunogene therapy’s manufacturer. Read more.

*January 2020* The FDA has scheduled an Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) hearing for February 26, 2020, to discuss data supporting a supplemental biologics license application (sBLA) for intravenous ramucirumab (Cyramza) injection for use in combination with erlotinib (Tarceva) in the frontline treatment of patients with metastatic non–small cell lung…

*January 2020* Dana-Farber’s Pasi Jänne, MD, PhD, and his colleagues say they have discovered a mechanism within lung cancer cells that enables the cells to lie dormant and avoid destruction by the cancer drugs. Read more.