The Latest Lung Cancer Research Updates From ASCO 2022

The Latest Lung Cancer Research Updates From ASCO 2022 from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Dr. Tejas Patil from the University of Colorado Cancer Center shares the latest news in lung cancer research and treatment from the 2022 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, including an update on immunotherapy.

Dr. Tejas Patil is an academic thoracic oncologist at the University of Colorado Cancer Center focused on targeted therapies and novel biomarkers in lung cancer. Learn more about Dr. Patil, here.

See More From INSIST! Lung Cancer

Related Resources:

Lung Cancer Research Highlights From ASCO 2022

Lung Cancer Targeted Therapy: What Is It and Who Is It Right For?

How Does Immunotherapy Treat Lung Cancer?


Transcript:

Katherine:

Researchers came together earlier this summer at the annual ASCO meeting. Were there highlights from the meeting that lung cancer patients should know about? 

Dr. Patil:

Right. So, the ASCO ’22 meeting this year had some really interesting publications. So, for me, the key publications that I thought were kind of interesting from ASCO ’22, 2022, one was a publication looking at the role of immunotherapy in patients who are – have a very high PD-L1 expression, so greater than 50 percent. And there’s – 

Katherine:

Reminds us what PDL is. 

Dr. Patil:

Oh, yes, of course. So, PD-L1 is a biomarker. It’s a predictive biomarker that lets us know whether some patients will benefit from immunotherapy. It’s also prognostic because if patients have a high PD-L1 score, they tend to do better with immunotherapy than patients who have a low PD-L1 score. 

Katherine:

Okay.  

Dr. Patil:

Now the interesting data that was presented was a pooled analysis of all the immunotherapy trials to date. And there’s been this ongoing question in lung cancer as to whether patients should get chemo with immunotherapy or whether they should just get immune therapy alone.  

And this study showed that if you have a very high PD-L1 score, it is potentially possible to just use immune therapy and forgo chemotherapy. And I thought that was a very interesting analysis.  

There’s also several other papers that came out as well. Mostly there was a lot of interest in something called circulating tumor DNA. So, let me just take a step back. This is a type of molecule that can be detected in the blood that can help determine whether cancer is present in your blood or not. And there was a lot of publications at ASCO looking at using a concept called minimal residual disease.  

So, when we treat patients with early-stage lung cancer, a big question is how do we know they’re cured or not cured? And a lot of abstracts and publications this ASCO were looking at this concept of minimal residual disease. So, if I can detect some cancer in your blood after you’ve had cured curative therapies, we’re – we have a problem because there’s still cancer around and we’re detecting it in the blood.  

And I think this type of approach is going to really inform how we think about early-stage lung cancer management in the future. 

What Testing Should Take Place After Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Treatment?

What Testing Should Take Place After Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Treatment? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

It’s well-known that patients should undergo testing before choosing lung cancer therapy, but what testing should take place following treatment? Lung cancer specialist Dr. Tejas Patil, from the University of Colorado Cancer Center, discusses the role of testing after treatment.

Dr. Tejas Patil is an academic thoracic oncologist at the University of Colorado Cancer Center focused on targeted therapies and novel biomarkers in lung cancer. Learn more about Dr. Patil, here.

See More From INSIST! Lung Cancer

Related Resources:

How Does Biomarker Testing Impact Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Care?

Lung Cancer Targeted Therapy: What Is It and Who Is It Right For?

Why Do Lung Cancer Patients Need Molecular Testing Before Choosing Treatment?


Transcript:

Katherine:

We know that patients should undergo testing before choosing therapy, but what testing should take place following treatment? 

Dr. Patil:

That’s a really good question. And it’s a complex question depending on the type of treatment that the patient is receiving. So, broadly speaking in lung cancer, we’ve separated the field into two types of treatments.  

Patients with lung cancers will get molecular testing at the onset, right? When they’re diagnosed to look for what’s called a driver oncogene. So, these are mutations that can be targeted with pill-based treatments. And if patients have these mutations, there’s about 10 of these right now and several in development, then the patients can receive a targeted therapy.

However, if they don’t have these mutations, then the standard of care right now is some kind of chemotherapy with immunotherapy. Now, the question asked was what kind of testing do you do after diagnosis? And that really depends on which camp you’re in. So, if you’re in the targeted therapy camp, my general practice has been to repeat molecular testing upon progression. The reason is that patients who are receiving targeted therapies typically evolved some kind of resistance to targeted therapy.  

Broadly speaking, you can categorize these as on target or off target resistance, but the major reason for doing repeat molecular testing is to understand a mechanism of resistance and then hopefully develop a new treatment with that knowledge. Now for the camp that doesn’t receive targeted therapies, let’s say they receive chemotherapy and immunotherapy, there it gets a little bit more nuanced.  

And if there is a role for repeating a biopsy and looking for dynamic changes in the patient’s cancer, but it is not routine and should be done with consultation with a thoracic oncologist. And really the idea here is that if patients who are on chemo immunotherapy progress, any additional molecular testing should really help inform what the next line of treatment will be and sometimes that can be a clinical trial.  

How Does Biomarker Testing Impact Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Care?

How Does Biomarker Testing Impact Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Care? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Biomarker testing identifies certain genes, proteins, or other molecules present in a biologic sample. Dr. Tejas Patil, of University of Colorado Cancer Center, discusses how results from these tests can be used to determine a treatment approach for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Dr. Tejas Patil is an academic thoracic oncologist at the University of Colorado Cancer Center focused on targeted therapies and novel biomarkers in lung cancer. Learn more about Dr. Patil, here.

See More From INSIST! Lung Cancer

Related Resources:

Why Do Lung Cancer Patients Need Molecular Testing Before Choosing Treatment?

Lung Cancer Targeted Therapy: What Is It and Who Is It Right For?

What Testing Should Take Place After Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Treatment?


Transcript:

Katherine:

Biomarker testing is important prior to choosing therapy for non-small cell lung cancer. What is this test and how long does it take to get results? 

Dr. Patil:

That is a great question. So, a biomarker is a biological molecule found in blood or other body fluids or tissues that is a sign of a normal or an abnormal process.  

Or let me reframe that as it represents having some kind of medical condition or disease. Now, it’s a very broad definition. Basically, a biomarker can be used to see how well the body responds to a treatment for a disease or a condition. And when we look at it from a genetic perspective, sometimes the term that you’ll see is a molecular marker or a signature molecule.  

So, these are terms that are sort of interchangeable with biomarkers. But the role of a biomarker is to help ascertain how well the body responds to a certain medical intervention, broadly speaking. 

Katherine:

Okay. What question should a patient ask their doctor about test results? 

Dr. Patil:

So that’s a very complicated question, and I will do my best to answer it succinctly. So, my personal view is that for any test to be meaningful, it should impact medical decision-making in some very concrete way.  

Specifically, with biomarkers, the result should either be prognostic or predictive and I’ll define what those terms are. So, a predictive biomarker is one that helps determine if a certain therapy will be effective. So, I’m going to use lung cancer as an example. In EGFR mutation in non-small cell lung cancer allows a doctor to prescribe an EGFR targeted therapy called osimertinib (Tagrisso). Therefore, in this example, the EGFR mutation is predictive.  

It opens the door for this targeted option that would otherwise not have been available if the patient did not have this EGFR mutation. A prognostic marker is a little different. This is the type of marker that helps categorize risk. So, in the same example I used earlier, that patient may have an EGFR mutation.  

They can also have a different mutation called TP53. Now this TP53 mutation doesn’t influence therapy. It’s not targetable, but it does influence risk.  

And so, there’s been a lot of emerging data to show that patients with TP53 mutations have worse outcomes on targeted therapies than patients without TP53. And in that case, that mutation is what we call a prognostic biomarker. 

Why Lung Cancer Patient Advocacy Is Essential

Why Lung Cancer Patient Advocacy Is Essential from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez, a lung cancer specialist, discusses the importance of patient advocacy in lung cancer care. Dr. Rodriguez shares how self-advocacy can impact cancer care and how being vocal as a patient advocate can help others in the lung cancer community.

Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez is Associate Director of Community Outreach – Thoracic Oncology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Health System. Learn more about Dr. Rodriguez, here.

See More from Thrive Lung Cancer

Related Resources:

Expert Advice for Recently Diagnosed Lung Cancer Patients

Why Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients Should Speak Up About Symptoms and Side Effects

What Is the Difference Between Small Cell and Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer?


Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:

Why is it so important for patients to share their symptoms and side effects that they’re having with their healthcare team? 

Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez:

So, there are two types of advocacy. There’s the advocacy that you do at your personal level, so if the patient is not telling us that they’re having side effects, weeks can go by and these things don’t get addressed. So, you have to be your own advocate, your family can be a great advocate. It doesn’t matter who you are, if we don’t know your side effects, and you’re not communicating that, we’re not able to impact, and intervene early. But there’s a bigger message of advocacy that is extremely important, specifically in lung cancer for decades. 

I mean, I think for a long time we didn’t have a lot of lung cancer advocates because people were not surviving lung cancer. And now, that we have people live years with lung cancer, metastatic cancer, and really are coming off treatment, now we have patients that can be the guiding light. 

They can tell other patients about how they did, their side effects, can tell their story about how targeted treatment impacted their prognosis. So, advocacy is critical, we don’t have a lot of advocacy in lung cancer. We need advocates in every community, rural communities, urban communities, African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans. In every community there is someone who’s impacted by lung cancer.   

I think that you get something out of it, you feel like you’re helping other people, you’re definitely making people aware. And hopefully, if a legislator hears your story, because last night I was at an advocacy summit, and we had a legislator, and we were asking what really moves legislators to invest in research. And he’s like, “It’s not letter, it’s not emails, it’s these personal stories from patients, and patient advocates.” And we don’t have those stories unless people come out and say and tell them. But they really make people invest, and they really prioritize the importance of research. And that would help you also because if there’s more research, then your next treatment will be funded faster. 

Expert Advice for Recently Diagnosed Lung Cancer Patients

Expert Advice for Recently Diagnosed Lung Cancer Patients from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

A lung cancer diagnosis can be overwhelming. Lung cancer specialist Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez shares key advice for recently diagnosed patients, including tips related to essential testing and preparing for appointments.

Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez is Associate Director of Community Outreach – Thoracic Oncology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Health System. Learn more about Dr. Rodriguez, here.

See More from Thrive Lung Cancer

Related Resources:

Why Lung Cancer Patient Advocacy Is Essential

Why Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients Should Speak Up About Symptoms and Side Effects

Fact or Fiction? Busting Myths About Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer


Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:

What key advice do you have for recently diagnosed lung cancer patients? 

Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez:

I think that a couple of things. When it’s a diagnosis of lung cancer, it’s very overwhelming, and fortunately now there’s a lot of resources online, but at the beginning there’s a lot of information that you don’t know. So, sometimes if you go online all you do is get scared. I think that you need to answer some very specific questions from your doctor. What is your stage? And then, after your stage, my next question is; what is a molecular driver of my tumor, the sequencing of my tumor?  

In the past, we thought all the lung cancers were the same, but now we know they’re many, many different types of lung cancer. And they’re the EGFR-driven cancers, the ALK, the ROS, they’re all different, they all have different treatment options. And when you go and look online, there’s organized advocacy groups around each of these mutations, and then you can get better information, and valuable kind of insight from the information that is out there. So, I think the first thing is to before you go in the internet, talk to your doctor about your stage and require, not ask lightly.  

Require that your genetic mutation, your sequencing is done at the time of diagnosis of advanced lung cancer. Because that would really determine your treatment.  

So, I think that is very important for patients that get diagnosed. And then also, understand that there are a lot of resources out there, so that you need to ask for questions, bring someone with you. During COVID a lot of the clinics were closed, but we were able to have family members join virtually the visits, and now patients can come in with their family members. 

I find that having someone else in the room who wrote answers and wrote notes, will really help you kind of get the most out of your consultation. And also ask questions for the next time you come, or we have a portal where patients ask questions online. So, the first visit where you get the most questions answered, and sometimes it’s part B and part C. So, you have to keep until you feel satisfied that you understand the plan. We also tell patients that doctors don’t know everything, sometimes the doctor that you have is not the one that you feel you have a connection with. So, know that you have rights, and there are other doctors out there, and you can get second opinions. 

So, you are the best advocate, it’s your life, and you can rely on your doctor, and their physician extenders, physician assistants, nurses, to get as much as you can from that. But also, look outside of your institution, maybe there’s a better option for you. 

How Does Immunotherapy Treat Lung Cancer?

How Does Immunotherapy Treat Lung Cancer? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

How does immunotherapy work? Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez, a lung cancer specialist, explains how immunotherapy harnesses the immune system to kill cancer cells and how this treatment approach is transforming lung cancer care.

Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez is Associate Director of Community Outreach – Thoracic Oncology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Health System. Learn more about Dr. Rodriguez, here.

See More From INSIST! Lung Cancer

Related Resources:

 
What Treatments Are Available for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer?

Immunotherapy for Lung Cancer Treatment: What to Expect

Understanding Biomarker Testing for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Treatment

Understanding Biomarker Testing for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Treatment


Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:

What is immunotherapy, and how does it work to treat lung cancer?  

Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez:

So, immunotherapy technically can be used to treat almost every cancer. So, it’s this concept that over time the cancer cells learn to bypass the immune surveillance, which is the way that your body identifies cells that are abnormal and gets rid of them.  

Your immune system can do that. And over time cancer grows and grows faster because your immune cells don’t even recognize that the cancer cells are there. So, immune therapy, specifically the checkpoint inhibitors, they target a receptor that is overexpressed in cancer cells, that make cancer cells invisible to the immune system. So, when you use, for example, some of these antibodies that bind the PD-L1, the programmed death ligand-1 receptor, that in itself gets rid of that veil that is covering the tumor cells. And now, your immune system can recognize the cancer. 

And that is one way of activating the immune system against the cancer, checkpoint inhibitors. There are newer drugs that are coming in the market, newer kind of engineered immune cells that will, in the future, be able to be developed for that specific cell. And in a way, immune therapy is more natural because you’re not getting a chemotherapy is that causes nausea or hair loss.  

You’re getting your immune system kind of ramped up, activated, against your cancer cells. It can have side effects of when you activate all these immune cells, you can cause inflammation in the body that has to be monitored, and some patients can be serious. And also, people have developed autoimmune kind of antibody reactions. So, there is a lot of monitoring that needs to be done. It’s given intravenously. We have doses now that last up to six weeks in some of the major immunotherapies that we use, like pembrolizumab, so you don’t have to come all the time. 

And I think the one thing that I’ve seen that is very promising about immunotherapy is that if you activate your immune system, almost like when you were young you got a vaccine, and you don’t have to get it every year, you have a memory response against that virus. Immunotherapy can achieve that for about 20 to 30 percent of patients today, where they get this memory against the cancer cells, and they could potentially come off treatment. 

Lung Cancer Targeted Therapy: What Is It and Who Is It Right For?

Lung Cancer Targeted Therapy: What Is It and Who Is It Right For? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

How does targeted therapy work? Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez defines targeted therapy and shares how this personalized treatment approach attacks lung cancer cells.

Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez is Associate Director of Community Outreach – Thoracic Oncology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Health System. Learn more about Dr. Rodriguez, here.

See More From INSIST! Lung Cancer

Related Resources:

Why Do Lung Cancer Patients Need Molecular Testing Before Choosing Treatment?

How Does Immunotherapy Treat Lung Cancer?

Understanding Biomarker Testing for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Treatment

Understanding Biomarker Testing for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Treatment


Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:

What is targeted therapy and who might it be right for? 

Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez:

So, targeted therapy kind of falls under the umbrella of precision medicine, where if you find a genetic driver, a mutation that is making that cancer grow. And out there we have drugs, we already have nine that are targeting specific genetic changes.  

The targeted therapy is really that treatment, either a pill, or an injection that goes after the genetic driver. And that, in a way, I describe to patients like you have a switch that went on and caused the cancer growth, and now with the targeted therapy we can put that switch off. And those treatments are very important because as they have evolved, they have kind of fill the gaps that chemotherapy had for patients. So, the one thing about targeted therapy is that because you’re going after one specific change, many times they’re less toxic. 

So, cytotoxic chemotherapy to kill lung cancer cells has to unfortunately kill a lot of good cancer cells in your body, specifically red cells, white cells, and platelets. So, that your body has to recover from all this normal tissue that dies, the normal cells that get impacted by the cytotoxic chemotherapy. In targeted therapy there is side effects, but a lot of them are decreased compared to chemo. 

And they’re really going after cells that have this mutation. So, preferentially you’re attacking the cancer and not the whole body. So, that’s an extra advantage for patients. And as we have patients live longer on these treatments, toxicity, and cause, all these things are really critical so that we develop better drugs that are even more specific targeting only what needs to be targeted and cause less side effects. 

Why Do Lung Cancer Patients Need Molecular Testing Before Choosing Treatment?

Why Do Lung Cancer Patients Need Molecular Testing Before Choosing Treatment? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

How do a patient’s genetic mutations impact lung cancer treatment? Lung cancer specialist Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez emphasizes the importance of undergoing biomarker testing, also referred to as molecular testing, to identify genetic mutations, which may lead to a more personalized lung cancer therapy.

Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez is Associate Director of Community Outreach – Thoracic Oncology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Health System. Learn more about Dr. Rodriguez, here.

See More From INSIST! Lung Cancer

Related Resources:

Which Tests Do You Need Before Choosing a Lung Cancer Treatment?

What Are the Goals of Lung Cancer Treatment?

Lung Cancer Targeted Therapy: What Is It and Who Is It Right For?


Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:

What is molecular testing? 

Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez:

So, that is very critical for lung cancer patients today. So, molecular testing is when we get tumor cells, and we analyze the genetic changes that lead to that tumor growth. And that can be done today in different ways. The usual goal standard have been to do a biopsy of the tumor, and then do next generation sequencing when we analyze many, many genes that can impact cancer growth, and then we get a signature what drives that cancer. And in doing that, we discovered that some patients, for example, regardless of who they are, women or men, smokes or non-smokers, they may have a genetic driver that we have a treatment for, that does better than chemotherapy. 

So, that is important that you identify that as early as possible.  

Katherine Banwell:

Why is it necessary for patients to undergo molecular testing prior to a lung cancer treatment plan? 

Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez:

So, it is extremely critical because we have data today that several of these targeted treatments, the improvement of survival is not in the span of months, it’s in the span of years. 

People will do years better if they started with the treatment for their specific cancer driver mutation than if they received chemotherapy.  

We also saw that when immunotherapy came in the market a lot of patients, rightly so, doctors thought, “This is the best new thing, let’s put this patient on immunotherapy” and they were not testing patients for mutations before they started. And we found out two things, one is that there is toxicity if you give immunotherapy followed by some of the targeted therapies, specifically one called osimertinib (Tagrisso), so that you could cause harm.  

And then, number two, that immunotherapy doesn’t work in every case. A lot of patients with targeted driver mutations, they do better with a targeted treatment than they will do with chemotherapy and immunotherapy. So, I think it is important to define that early. We also now have approval for at least one targeted therapy after surgery. 

So, even patients that are early stage, which is not the majority of patients, but those patients also will get an improvement if they have an EGFR mutation specifically if they receive that targeted pill treatment after surgery. So, understanding the tumor is important so you can select the right treatment for the patient.  

Now, this is a dynamic thing, so tumors can evolve over time. So, there are many times that patients come to us for second opinions, and we actually recommend a repeat biopsy to understand the new genetic signature of that tumor because we may find a new option that was not there at the beginning. 

Where Do Clinical Trials Fit Into a Lung Cancer Treatment Plan?

Where Do Clinical Trials Fit Into a Lung Cancer Treatment Plan? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Clinical trial participation is essential to advancing cancer care options. Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez shares how clinical trials are providing lung cancer patients with more treatment approaches and discusses the safety protocols in place to protect patients.

Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez is Associate Director of Community Outreach – Thoracic Oncology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Health System. Learn more about Dr. Rodriguez, here.

See More From Lung Cancer Clinical Trials 201

Related Resources:

Lung Cancer Research Highlights From ASCO 2022

Lung Cancer Targeted Therapy: What Is It and Who Is It Right For?

Expert Advice for Recently Diagnosed Lung Cancer Patients


Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:

Dr. Rodriguez, research advances aren’t possible without patients participating in clinical trials. 

So, where do clinical trials actually fit into a lung cancer treatment plan? 

Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez:

So, clinical trials are really what move the science of all these developments that we saw at the oncology conference, the ASCO conference.  

So, it’s not until patients join trials that we can approve drugs. So, I think clinical trials are very important, so we move the science. But then, for specific patients in lung cancer, now that we’re moving all of our best therapies upfront, we run out of options faster than we did for some patients. So, it is important that A) that we have access to clinical trials, which if we look across the country many of our cancer patients don’t have either Phase I programs near them, they’re very difficult to get to, or very expensive to get to. 

So, we have to do a lot in terms of increasing access to clinical trials. 

But I think your specific question has to do where it comes in. I think if you have advanced lung cancer, where most patients today will not have a cure, clinical trials is at the center of things that should be considered from the get-go. Sometimes some of the drugs are what is called Phase I, that these are new drugs that we’re trying to find a dose, we don’t really understand the efficacy of the drugs. So, those trials are reserved for patients that have failed standard treatment. 

But then we have patients with very difficult situations that are progressing really fast that should join clinical trials. And I think that as we do more biomarker testing, we are learning a lot about the individual patient tumor.  

So, the promise of precision medicine is that you can actually find drugs for specific patients, and that’s what clinical trials that are called basket trials, where if you have a mutation regardless of your tissue of origin. So, for example, we have two large basket trials that we are enrolling patients, one called the TAPUR trial and the other one called MATCH.  

And MATCH is organized by the NCI and TAPUR by ASCO, and these trials if you find you have a biomarker analysis of next generation sequence, you find a specific mutation, you can actually see there’s a trial for this specific patient. So, the trials come in, I think they’re very critical to move the science, they’re very important for individual patients with rare mutations, but I think it’s upon us to make sure that these trials are available.   

Katherine Banwell:

What advice do you have for patients who may be hesitant to participate in a clinical trial? 

Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez:

So, I think you have to ask questions, I think that there’s a lot of misconceptions in different communities. So, we take care of a lot of Hispanic patients, and we have kind of really have to do a lot of education about what patients and patients family’s think about. Because sometimes I feel I have to convince the family members before I can get to really talk to the patient about the trials. 

But I think in the past, trials have been considered only experimental, and patients are used for science but not really getting a benefit. So, I think that’s the first misconception. When we open a trial at our cancer center, and I’m part of the experimental therapeutics’ unit, we are opening trials that we believe that that science will move and offer something in addition. So, I think, that is not because we want to do an experiment, it’s because we really want to offer this patient the latest, or something new, that could potentially offer them a better response than what we are achieving with our standard treatments. 

So, I think that’s the first misconception, that these are experiments on patients and patients don’t benefit. The whole point of the trial is to find better drugs and benefit.  

So, it’s been shown in multiple parts of the country and big cancer centers that patients that join clinical trials do better at the stage of their disease. And part of the reason that they do better is that instead of having one doctor that is making decisions, and they’re running out of options, and kind of coming up with ideas out of nowhere, when you join a Phase I clinical trial or an organized trial, you have at least 10 to 20 doctors that are looking at your case or reviewing your images. There’s a lot of check to make sure that you’re not getting unwanted toxicity and that the trial is stopped if you’re not getting a benefit. 

And this is important so that we don’t expose more patients to toxicity, but that’s another misconception that it’s not safe. And we’ll do our best to make sure that it’s safe. 

Lung Cancer Research Highlights From ASCO 2022

Lung Cancer Research Highlights From ASCO 2022 from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Lung cancer specialist Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez shares research updates from the 2022 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting, including the latest advances in immunotherapy and inhibitor therapy.

Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez is Associate Director of Community Outreach – Thoracic Oncology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Health System. Learn more about Dr. Rodriguez, here.

See More From Lung Cancer Clinical Trials 201

Related Resources:

Where Do Clinical Trials Fit Into a Lung Cancer Treatment Plan?

Fact or Fiction? Busting Myths About Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Expert Advice for Navigating Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Care and Treatment


Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:

Cancer researchers recently came together at the annual ASCO meeting. Were there any highlights at the meeting that you think lung cancer patients should know about? 

Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez:

So, sometimes we look at the conference, and we look at the plenary sessions. And if we don’t see a lung cancer abstract centered at the big plenary session, we feel that nothing happened, but a lot happened. We are learning that all the advances in terms of immunotherapy and targeted therapies can be used earlier and earlier for patients. So, we had data on the NADIM trial, which is a trial out of Spain where they use neoadjuvant, chemo immunotherapy. 

We already have that approved in the United States with nivolumab (Opdivo), and they use also nivolumab with a different combination chemotherapy. What was really amazing is that you can replicate this data that is used in immunotherapy before surgery, patients can have very dramatic pathologic complete responses. Which means that at the time of surgery, we don’t find cancer, and that portends a better prognosis. And obviously, we’re trying to do our best for patients. So, that was really, I think, confirms the data that we have seen that immunotherapy can be used earlier.  

We also saw updates of trials that had been ongoing looking at the use of immunotherapy in difficult settings. So, there was a trial also out of Spain called the ATEZO-BRAIN trial where they look at the use of immunotherapy Atezolizumab for patients that have brain disease and diagnosis of metastatic disease.  

And for a long time, we thought that immunotherapy responses really wouldn’t work in the brain, and we saw that in this trial they were able to control disease in the brain, delay the use of radiation for these patients, and improve their quality of life. So, I think that was, again, a strong message that immunotherapy is here to stay, we can use it in your patients. Then, the third section of trials that were very telling were updates of new drugs for targeted therapy. So, we know today that we have about nine actionable mutations in lung cancer.  

So, that is very important that we understand that when a patient gets diagnosed, do they have an actionable mutation, a genetic change that we can target? And that is really the promise of precision medicine, so they present the data for a new drug for KRAS G12C mutation, positive patients call it aggressive. And we already have a drug that was approved about a year ago called sotorasib. 

And these drugs are used on patients that previously we knew will do very poorly with chemotherapy and immunotherapy because this KRAS G12C mutation is actually a very common mutation in lung cancer, more common than the other mutations that we have approved targeted therapies in the past, and it’s been difficult to treat.  

So now, we have another drug that shows a very good response rate after patients have failed chemo and immunotherapy. It’s still not as a dramatic response as we have seen on the third generation EGFR, ALK and ROS inhibitors, but still a really good promise for patients that didn’t have an option. 

So, that was good, they also updated more data on some of the third-generation drugs for ALK. So, we have seen in a prior conference called ACR the drug lorlatinib (Lorbrena), which a third-generation ALK inhibitor, has showed already improvements for patients that have failed prior therapies.  

But now they’re showing that for patients in the frontline setting when they first diagnose, receiving a third generation ALK inhibitor can improve brain responses. So, they saw a very dramatic has a ratio of .8, so basically over 80 percent of the brain disease was controlled, and in some complete responses were seen. 

And then, patients had a median survival that was over the three-year mark, which had been seen with the prior ALK inhibitors. So, I think it just goes to show that the progress in targeted therapies for lung cancers is exponential, that once we understand the genetic pathways, and we can develop better drugs. 

For example, this lorlatinib drug was actually developed in a way that it will stay in the brain longer, because we know that that’s an area where patients have failed. So, really understanding where the prior drugs have failed, where this resistance has been happened, allows us to develop better drugs for patients. So, I think it’s definitely very hopeful conference. I think the best part of the conference was people coming together, because I think that’s when investigators have the opportunity to collaborate and think of new ideas. 

So, I think that we don’t take it for granted that we were able to have an in-person conference, which hadn’t happened in two years. We had patient advocates that joined as well, so that’s also very important that the patient advocates are part of the research program, and ideas, and presentations. 

Understanding Biomarker Testing for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Treatment

Understanding Biomarker Testing for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Treatment from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

 Dr. David Carbone reviews how mutations found through biomarker testing – genetic analysis of the lung cancer – may affect non-small cell lung cancer therapy decisions.

Dr. David Carbone is a medical oncologist and professor of internal medicine at The Ohio State University. Dr. Carbone is also co-leader of the Translational Therapeutics Program at the OSUCCC – James, where serves as director of the Thoracic Oncology Center. Learn more about Dr. Carbone, here.

See More From INSIST! Lung Cancer

Related Resources:

Fact or Fiction? Busting Myths About Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Why Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients Should Speak Up About Symptoms and Side Effects

Why Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients Should Speak Up About Symptoms and Side Effects

Immunotherapy for Lung Cancer Treatment: What to Expect

Immunotherapy for Lung Cancer Treatment: What to Expect


Transcript:

Katherine:

Let’s talk about biomarker testing. What is it, first of all, and what are you looking for, exactly, when you receive the results?

Dr. Carbone:

Well, you have to order the results, so you have to know what to order. And we already touched on it a little bit. The genetic analysis of a tumor has become central to picking a therapy. And when I say “genetic analysis,” that is what you’re referring to as one of the biomarker tests we use.

Unfortunately, it’s true that many patients have therapies started without waiting for the results of these biomarker tests, and that really can have a negative impact on their care, because the results of this testing can make the difference between chemotherapy or a pill. It’s a totally diametrically different therapy.

So, these genetic tests look for things that we call driver mutations, and these are alterations in the genes of your cancer that are not present in the rest of your body; they’re not passed down to your children, or need to get looked for in your brother or your sister, like some of the breast cancer mutations you may hear about.

These are mutations that are present in the tumor that act like light switches, and they turn the cancer on to grow like crazy.

And through scientific research, we’ve discovered many of these in lung cancer, where, if we can find the specific driver mutation, many of these have specific drugs that can turn that switch back off. And virtually 100 percent or very close to every patient where we can find that matching drug to their driver will have some tumor shrinkage.

And it’s quite remarkable, but we need to do that matching, because these new drugs only work in that subset of patients with that mutation, and that’s why it’s so important to do that matching. And now, we have eight or 10 of these types of mutations that need to be looked for.

Why Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients Should Speak Up About Symptoms and Side Effects

Why Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients Should Speak Up About Symptoms and Side Effects from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Dr. David Carbone, a lung cancer expert, emphasizes the importance of speaking up, advocating for yourself, and being an active member of your non-small cell lung cancer health care team. 

Dr. David Carbone is a medical oncologist and professor of internal medicine at The Ohio State University. Dr. Carbone is also co-leader of the Translational Therapeutics Program at the OSUCCC – James, where serves as director of the Thoracic Oncology Center. Learn more about Dr. Carbone, here.

See More From INSIST! Lung Cancer

Related Resources:

What Treatments Are Available for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer?

How Is Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Staged?

Immunotherapy for Lung Cancer Treatment: What to Expect

Immunotherapy for Lung Cancer Treatment: What to Expect


Transcript:

Katherine:                  

Patients can sometimes feel like they’re bothering their healthcare team with their comments and questions. Why is it important for patients to speak up, and become a partner in their own care? 

Dr. Carbone:              

So, it’s a fact that when patients get the diagnosis of lung cancer, everything changes in their lives. They suddenly have a whole new vocabulary thrown at them. It’s like their doctor is speaking French to them. They have to trust their life to a person they’ve never met before, and a whole cadre of people coming in and talking to them and poking them and running through scanners. 

It’s very difficult for someone whose biggest concern was what to make for dinner that night, and now has a diagnosis of lung cancer, to really comprehend what’s going on. And lung cancer is complicated, so I recommend that patients really try their best to have at least a basic understanding of what’s going on, where their cancer is. I always show the patient their scans.  

“Your cancer is here; this is what it looks like; that’s why you’re having that pain over there, because you have this spot here. Your genetic testing shows this and this, and that’s why it’s important, and that’s why we’re using this drug to match this mutation.” And these are things patients will understand if doctors will explain it to them.  

And similarly, the side effects. Lung cancer patients tend to be tough people. They’ll say, “It’s not so bad, I feel better; but the side effect is not so bad. I’m just not going to tell them.” And it even happens in clinic that they’ll tell me they feel fine, and then they’ll tell the nurse that they hurt in their left elbow. And I have to go back in and ask them some more questions on that.  

So, it’s extremely important to feel comfortable in communicating with your doctor, asking questions; “Why am I getting this scan? Why are we using this treatment? Is this the best treatment? Are there clinical trials available? I have this new symptom, x, y, z,” because symptoms are often much easier to treat when you catch them early than when you catch them late.  

And you don’t get a medal for being a tough guy in this situation. Tell your doctor if you have pain, and they can manage it. Tell them if you’re short of breath, and they can help you feel better. They can’t help you if you don’t tell them, and you are your own best advocate in this situation. Ask questions about the treatment, and why that’s the best one for you; and, as I said, about clinical trials. 

Katherine:                  

Excellent. Thank you so much. It’s important for people to remember that.  

What Is Maintenance Therapy for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer?

What Is Maintenance Therapy for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Lung cancer expert Dr. David Carbone responds to a patient question about the purpose of maintenance therapy for lung cancer and what to expect.

Dr. David Carbone is a medical oncologist and professor of internal medicine at The Ohio State University. Dr. Carbone is also co-leader of the Translational Therapeutics Program at the OSUCCC – James, where serves as director of the Thoracic Oncology Center. Learn more about Dr. Carbone, here.

See More From INSIST! Lung Cancer

Related Resources:

What Treatments Are Available for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer?

Why Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients Should Speak Up About Symptoms and Side Effects

Why Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients Should Speak Up About Symptoms and Side Effects

Immunotherapy for Lung Cancer Treatment: What to Expect

Immunotherapy for Lung Cancer Treatment: What to Expect


Transcript:

Katherine:

Lindsay sent in this question: “My doctor has talked about putting me on maintenance therapy following my treatment regimen. What is maintenance therapy for lung cancer?”

Dr. Carbone:              

So, many of our treatments have a maintenance phase, and I’m not sure which treatment she’s talking about. But even with chemotherapy, now, if people are on chemotherapy alone, will usually use a double chemotherapy to start, and then will drop one of the chemos after a few cycles, and then continue the other as a maintenance.

A more typical regimen today is a combination of two chemos and an immunotherapy. And generally, we’ll stop the more toxic chemotherapy after a few cycles and continue the less toxic chemotherapy plus the immunotherapy, usually for up to two years.

After chemo-radiation, you’d have a maintenance immunotherapy as well. So, maintenance therapy is just a lower-intensity therapy after your initial therapy, designed to keep the cancer from coming back.

Immunotherapy for Lung Cancer Treatment: What to Expect

Immunotherapy for Lung Cancer Treatment: What to Expect from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Dr. David Carbone responds to a viewer question related to the symptoms, side effects, and efficacy of immunotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer.

Dr. David Carbone is a medical oncologist and professor of internal medicine at The Ohio State University. Dr. Carbone is also co-leader of the Translational Therapeutics Program at the OSUCCC – James, where serves as director of the Thoracic Oncology Center. Learn more about Dr. Carbone, here.

See More From INSIST! Lung Cancer

Related Resources:

What Treatments Are Available for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer?

How Is Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Staged?

What Is Maintenance Therapy for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer?


Transcript:

Katherine:

We have received some questions from audience members earlier on. And so, David writes, “My care team has suggested immunotherapy to treat my lung cancer. I’m optimistic about the results, but nervous about symptoms and side effects. What can I expect?”

Dr. Carbone:              

The immunotherapy is a potent therapy, but you have to understand, you’re dealing with lung cancer, which is a rapidly fatal disease when untreated. So, there’s a balance there. There’s a risk/benefit calculation that happens in picking any treatment.

And it turns out that I would say most lung cancer patients today have immunotherapy as part of their first treatment. Immunotherapy ramps up your own immune system to make it more effective at seeing the cancer, which has previously grown because it’s hidden itself behind a kind of invisibility cloak, and these immunotherapies remove this invisibility cloak so that the immune system can see it.

But at the same time, this process is a normal process that’s used to keep the immune system in check, and keep the immune system from attacking normal tissues, as well. So, it’s pretty common that we see people on immunotherapy have some kind of autoimmune side effect.

The most common side effect with immunotherapy is a skin rash, and usually it’s mild, and you just treat it with a topic corticosteroid, and it’s not a big issue. But it sometimes can be very severe. Like everything else, there’s a spectrum. I would say most patients have no skin problems; some have severe; and it’s almost always treatable. The next most common side effect is thyroid endocrine disorders. So, people will get thyroid function loss. And so, this is something that we follow carefully in the clinic, and people who are on immunotherapy.

And when we start seeing their thyroid levels going down, we just start them on thyroid medication, and that completely fixes that problem. So, but it’s usually permanent, and even after they stop immunotherapy, they’ll need to take thyroid medicines and adjust their thyroid levels.

And then, there’s a whole slew of other possible side effects that are less common. Some are very severe. Less than one percent of patients have a severe side effect called colitis, which causes diarrhea, which can even be life-threatening, but is also treatable if detected early. Very uncommon to be so severe, but patients should let their doctors know if they experience unusual diarrhea.

You can also have inflammation in your lungs called pneumonitis. So, if there’s an onset of shortness of breath, of course, you’ll tell your doctor, and that can be treated, as well. And anything else, there’s a huge list of other things. Arthritis, uveitis, other things that happen, but are pretty rare.

Fact or Fiction? Busting Myths About Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Fact or Fiction? Busting Myths About Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Dr. David Carbone debunks common misconceptions about non-small cell lung cancer, including treatment effectiveness, age and lung cancer, and patient’s quality of life after treatment.

Dr. David Carbone is a medical oncologist and professor of internal medicine at The Ohio State University. Dr. Carbone is also co-leader of the Translational Therapeutics Program at the OSUCCC – James, where serves as director of the Thoracic Oncology Center. Learn more about Dr. Carbone, here.

See More From INSIST! Lung Cancer

Related Resources:

What Treatments Are Available for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer?

What Is the Difference Between Small Cell and Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer?

What Is Maintenance Therapy for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer?


Transcript:

Katherine:                  

A lung cancer diagnosis often has a certain stigma associated with it, but the majority of that is not based in fact. So, I’d like to play a little game with you called Fact or Fiction. All right? All right, first one. Fact or fiction: Lung cancer is a disease of the older population.

Dr. Carbone:              

If you have lungs, you can get lung cancer. That’s it. I’ve seen 20-year-old lung cancer patients. So, I think it can happen to anybody, and unfortunately, things like the CT screening programs are limited to people over the age of 50, but I’ve had many patients in their 30s and 40s. So, if you have lungs, you can have lung cancer.

Katherine:                  

Okay. Next one, fact or fiction: Quality of life is greatly diminished after undergoing treatment for lung cancer.

Dr. Carbone:              

I completely – fiction. I actually tell people often their quality of life is dramatically improved after starting treatments, and that’s my goal.

And with the new treatments, that’s often true. People will tell me within a week that they feel so much better on the treatment than they did before. So, that’s our goal. Our goal is not to make you feel worse. Our goal is to make you feel better.

Katherine:                  

Of course. All right, last one. Fact or fiction: There are no effective treatments for advanced lung cancer.

Dr. Carbone:              

So, the average survival for lung cancer years ago was four to six months from the time of diagnosis to death. That’s bad. And now, we are seeing in these subsets of patients years and years of survival with simple even pill-type treatments or immunotherapies. And even with the immunotherapies, sometimes you get treatments for a year or two, and then we stop; and we have patients who are years later, off of all treatments for metastatic lung cancer, still with no evidence of disease.

So, that is definitely fiction. We have highly effective treatments for lung cancer. But unfortunately, like everything else, and like I’ve said multiple times, it’s not true for everyone. Our treatments aren’t ideal. Sometimes for a particular patient we can’t find a matching treatment, the standard treatments don’t work, and nothing we can find makes a difference. But I would say you never know that until you try, and for the vast majority of patients, we can definitely give them prolonged, good-quality life. And so, I think that that’s definitely fiction.