Tag Archive for: NYU Langone

Dr. Joshua Sabari: Why Is It Important for You to Empower Patients?

/in , /by

Dr. Joshua Sabari: Why Is It Important for You to Empower Patients? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Dr. Joshua Sabari emphasizes the importance of active listening and non-judgmental communication in patient care. Dr. Sabari shares how allowing patients to express themselves fully and addressing all their concerns without interruption fosters trust and empowerment.

See More from Empowering Providers to Empower Patients (EPEP)

Related Resources:

Dr. Eugene Manley: Why Is It Important for You to Empower Patients?

 Dr. Samuel Cykert: Why Is It Important for You to Empower Patients?

Dr. Samuel Cykert: Why Is It Important for You to Empower Patients?

 Dr. Charlotte Gamble: Why Is It Important for You to Empower Patients

Dr. Charlotte Gamble: Why Is It Important for You to Empower Patients? 

Transcript:

Dr. Joshua Sabari:

I think the key thing to empower patients is to listen and not to judge. The second a patient feels that you are cutting them off, you are judging them, they’re going to shut down. Family members shut down. Allowing patients to express themselves, to explain what the questions they have, never leave a visit when your patient has not finished their questions.

And I know that sounds silly, but you’d be surprised how many physicians walk out of office visits when patients still have many questions. That’s our job, that’s our role. You can set up another visit, you can set up a video visit, but make sure that you allow patients to ask their questions in an open manner, in a non-judgmental manner. Even myself, we all have biases. I find myself changing my facial sort of nuances when I think a patient is asking a silly question.

So understanding those biases that we all have and again, being open, sort of being sort of willing to hear and listen to our patients is critical. We’re not the person diagnosed with the lung cancer. It’s the patient there in front of us, the family members. I think being open, being able to listen broadly to patients’ concerns, even if they’re not in line with our concerns, I think is critical. Any point at which you shut down that conversation that may close that patient relationship down, that may close some of those questions that may have been critical for patients.

So, one thing that I always end our visits with is an open, this is an open discussion. This is how you contact me, this is how you contact our team. We are here for you. We are service providers to you. And I think that in itself having this sort of motivational but also open dialogue is going to empower your patients, not only to ask questions and the right questions, but to allow them to tell you when they’re not feeling well, when something is going wrong.

How Can We Leverage Lung Cancer Biomarker Data to Address Health Disparities

/in , , , , , , , , /by

How Can We Leverage Lung Cancer Biomarker Data to Address Health Disparities? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

How can biomarker disparities be overcome by data collection? Experts Dr. Joshua Sabari from NYU Langone and Dr. Eugene Manley from SCHEQ Foundation discuss the status of biomarker data sharing, biobanks, and improvements that can be made toward the future.

Download Resource Guide  | Descargar guía de recursos

See More from [ACT]IVATED NSCLC Biomarkers

Related Resources:

Hope Unleashed: Advancing Therapies for Defiant Mutations in Lung Cancer

Hope Unleashed: Advancing Therapies for Defiant Mutations in Lung Cancer

 Maximizing Biomarker Equity: Leveraging Partnerships to Close Biomarker Disparities in Lung Cancer

Maximizing Biomarker Equity: Leveraging Partnerships to Close Biomarker Disparities in Lung Cancer

 Lung Cancer Biomarker Disparities | How Precision Medicine and Research Can Help

Lung Cancer Biomarker Disparities | How Precision Medicine and Research Can Help

Transcript:

Lisa Hatifeld:

Are there any national or international databases that collect information from those biopsies, like a biopsy data bank of some kind so they can look at this disparate group of mutations? Or is it just institutional, like if an institution collects that tissue, they keep that information? I’m just wondering if that could help in any way with the disparities we see in those biomarkers.

Dr. Joshua Sabari:

Yeah, it’s a great question. AACR American Association for Cancer Research, a nonprofit, has started a biobank called the Genie Biobank, where you can input clinical as well as genomic information from patients. But to be honest, it’s very scattered. I mean, most of the databases that we have are individual institutions. There is very little sharing of data from institution to institution. There’s very little sharing of data from pharmaceuticals to institutions and vice versa.

I think everybody really needs to work in and pitch in together here that this is a common theme that comes up at a lot of our national meetings is how do we get everyone on the same page as opposed to everybody working in their different silos. It would be very helpful if all genomic data at every institution was available to everybody, but you can understand how that could be both confidential as well as proprietary. So, unfortunately in 2024, we don’t have broad biobanks or databases that are available publicly for consumption of investigators.

Dr. Eugene Manley:

And I think on top, beyond there not really being a massive biobank, there are still differences in what we can capture in race/ethnicity in the U.S. versus Canada and Europe. Sometimes they don’t even consider race as a category, which sometimes people think race is a social construct, but at the same token, there are distinct disparities we see in the U.S., because we capture this data, and it’s hard to then do this globally when we aren’t able to capture all it does.

But if you think about it, if you look across there are even genetic differences across each of those countries, we just don’t routinely think about it. So it’s really, we need to work on developing one, but it takes time, money and groups willing to work together, and we just, unfortunately, are not there yet.

Share Your Feedback

Create your own user feedback survey

Lung Cancer Biomarker Disparities | How Precision Medicine and Research Can Help

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Lung Cancer Biomarker Disparities | How Precision Medicine and Research Can Help from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

How can lung cancer research and precision medicine help with biomarker disparities? Experts Dr. Joshua Sabari from NYU Langone and Dr. Eugene Manley from SCHEQ Foundation discuss testing factors that need improvement, patient groups that show disparities, and how clinical trial participation can move research forward.

[ACT]IVATION TIP

“…we really have to more universally test everyone equally to really have an impact on outcomes.”

Download Resource Guide  | Descargar guía de recursos

See More from [ACT]IVATED NSCLC Biomarkers

Related Resources:

Hope Unleashed: Advancing Therapies for Defiant Mutations in Lung Cancer

Hope Unleashed: Advancing Therapies for Defiant Mutations in Lung Cancer

 Maximizing Biomarker Equity: Leveraging Partnerships to Close Biomarker Disparities in Lung Cancer

Maximizing Biomarker Equity: Leveraging Partnerships to Close Biomarker Disparities in Lung Cancer

 How Can We Leverage Lung Cancer Biomarker Data to Address Health Disparities?

How Can We Leverage Lung Cancer Biomarker Data to Address Health Disparities

Transcript:

Lisa Hatifeld:

So, how can advancements in precision medicine be made more inclusive and equitable to ensure that biomarker-driven treatments benefit diverse populations equally? Second part is, what do you see as the most pressing research priorities in understanding and mitigating these biomarker disparities?

Dr. Joshua Sabari:

So I think first and foremost, testing is key. I mean, educating clinicians, healthcare providers, that every single patient, no matter what clinical characteristic that may be, age, sex, ethnicity, race needs to be tested broadly with the same mutational sort of profile or same biomarker profile. Having somebody in your office who never smoked, those patients generally will have broad panel and next generation sequencing. If you have an 85-year-old patient who is a former heavy smoker, the rate of mutational testing comes down.

So I think we need to remove that bias, that those clinical biases that we have, that we carry with us on a day-to-day basis. We need to test all patients with lung cancer regardless of any clinical characteristic. And what I tell my fellows, my residents, and what I talk to patients about is really all you need is lungs to develop lung cancer.

We need to remove that stigma and when we remove that stigma, we will be testing more broadly in our practices. There are also a lot of systemic biases, a lot of racism that exists, that prevents clinicians, I believe, from doing the best thing for their patients. And if you look at clinical trial enrollment in this country and that’s something that we do need to improve in order to develop better treatment options for our patients, particularly our patients of Latin American descent or Black Americans in the United States.

We need to enroll more patients of more diverse backgrounds onto our trials. Otherwise, we’re only limiting our treatments to specific or small percent of our patient population. So to be honest, I don’t know how well our EGFR inhibitors work in Black patients. I know it’s approved and we utilize it, but we don’t have nearly as much data prospectively treating novel therapies.

A lot of our trials have inclusion rates as low as 2 percent to 3 percent. And we know that our Black patient populations make up 13 percent to 15 percent of our practices. So I think more needs to be done to align our enrollment on trial, I think from institutional policies as well as governmental. So the FDA has really made a forceful statement here to pharmaceutical companies that if your data is not inclusive of a U.S. patient population, this will have ramifications for approvals in the future.

So a lot needs to be done in the sense of education both from the healthcare provider and…but also from the patient, and to really motivate patients to enroll in trials. And one positive that I’ve seen from the patient support groups, the advocacy groups, particularly EGFR Resisters Group, for example, we’ve seen a tremendous sort of push for patients to enroll on trials, again, to benefit themselves as an individual patient diagnosed with EGFR mutant lung cancer, but also to help those who come before or after them in their journey with lung cancer.

Lisa Hatfield:

And, Dr. Manley, do you have anything to add to that?

Dr. Eugene Manley:

I think he hit most of it, but I will say that you have to test everyone because there are people that have risk factors for lung cancer and those that don’t. And like, one of the leading risk factors is history of smoking, but there’s a significant population of specifically Asian females that don’t smoke. Even recently, that have been showing that Black women that don’t smoke also have increased rates of lung cancer. And these are, we don’t know why.

So we still need to be able to test all these patients across all the indications and maybe cross-reference with stress income, socioeconomic status and really try to determine maybe if there are certain specific drivers and what we didn’t talk about. We know that there are some epigenetic changes that may occur due to stress. We also know that there are some changes in tumor mutational burden, some stuff out of MSK. And I think there is some stuff that even shows differences in the immunomarker frequency and response in Black populations. So, we really have to more universally test everyone equally to really have an impact on outcomes.

Share Your Feedback

Create your own user feedback survey

Hope Unleashed: Advancing Therapies for Defiant Mutations in Lung Cancer

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Hope Unleashed: Advancing Therapies for Defiant Mutations in Lung Cancer from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

What promising studies in lung cancer mutations are there that patients should know about? Expert Dr. Joshua Sabari from NYU Langone discusses common lung cancer mutations, incidence rates, promising and potential studies, and proactive patient advice.

[ACT]IVATION TIP

“…no matter what your lung cancer type is, no matter any clinical characteristic, you need next generation sequencing done, biomarker testing done, to identify these mutations. And even when we identify the mutation, I think as a group, as an academic community, we need to do more to study novel therapeutics and to better understand the biology of these mutations so that we can get better treatments to our patients.”

Download Resource Guide  | Descargar guía de recursos

See More from [ACT]IVATED NSCLC Biomarkers

Related Resources:

Maximizing Biomarker Equity: Leveraging Partnerships to Close Biomarker Disparities in Lung Cancer

Maximizing Biomarker Equity: Leveraging Partnerships to Close Biomarker Disparities in Lung Cancer

 Lung Cancer Biomarker Disparities | How Precision Medicine and Research Can Help

Lung Cancer Biomarker Disparities | How Precision Medicine and Research Can Help

 How Can We Leverage Lung Cancer Biomarker Data to Address Health Disparities?

How Can We Leverage Lung Cancer Biomarker Data to Address Health Disparities

Transcript:

Lisa Hatfield:

Dr. Sabari, can you speak to some of the more defiant mutations in lung cancer, and what promising studies are we looking at right now?

Dr. Joshua Sabari:

Yeah, so I think in lung cancer the most common mutations that we see are EGFR and KRAS. EGFR mutations are a quite broad range of alterations. The most common are in exon 19 deletion and exon 21. These are the location of the mutations. They make up about 80 percent to 85 percent. We have phenomenal treatments in the frontline setting, but most patients only remain on therapy for about two years before there is progression. So, we need to better understand resistance mechanisms, and we need to better understand the next generation of therapies that are available.

In contrast to EGFR, KRAS is equally as common. We see this in about 25 percent to 30 percent of the patient population. Unlike EGFR, KRAS is almost exclusively seen in people who’ve smoked in the past. And there are many different KRAS mutations or alleles. There’s KRAS G12C where we have two FDA-approved match targeted therapies in the second-line setting.

But we need better options, better opportunities for our patients in the frontline setting. And for KRAS, we’re not doing as well as we should, right? KRAS mutations, most people have about a 30 percent to 40 percent chance of responding to therapy. And the median time on treatment is in that six to seven month range. So this is a defiant mutation. It’s a mutation where we need to do better and we need to really develop the next generation of inhibitors for our patients.

So I guess the activation tip here is, again, no matter what your lung cancer type is, no matter any clinical characteristic, you need next generation sequencing done, biomarker testing done, to identify these mutations. And even when we identify the mutation, I think as a group, as an academic community, we need to do more to study novel therapeutics and to better understand the biology of these mutations so that we can get better treatments to our patients.

Share Your Feedback

Create your own user feedback survey

Equity in Action | Addressing Biomarker Disparities in Lung Cancer

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Equity in Action: Addressing Biomarker Disparities in Lung Cancer from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

How can biomarker disparities be reduced in lung cancer patients? Experts Dr. Joshua Sabari from NYU Langone and Dr. Eugene Manley from SCHEQ Foundation discuss approaches that are being used for community engagement and further interventions that can be used to reduce disparities.

Download Resource Guide  | Descargar guía de recursos

See More from [ACT]IVATED NSCLC Biomarkers

Related Resources:

Understanding Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: Types, Biomarkers, and Treatment Insights

Understanding Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: Types, Biomarkers, and Treatment Insights

 Navigating Lung Cancer Biomarker Testing | Challenges and Solutions for Timely Access

Navigating Lung Cancer Biomarker Testing | Challenges and Solutions for Timely Access

 When Should Lung Cancer Patients Receive Biomarker Testing?

When Should Lung Cancer Patients Receive Biomarker Testing?

Transcript:

Lisa Hatfield:

So, Dr. Manley, are there any promising approaches or interventions aimed at reducing biomarker disparities that you’ve currently been exploring or are advocating for?

Dr. Eugene Manley:

I will take several angles on this. One thing is there has to be much more community engagement and involvement and really going to community groups, whether they’re faith-based, whether they’re barbershops, really going out where people are and letting them know about lung cancer, lung cancer disparities, biomarker testing, what you can do. The other way is also going to conferences where there are more diverse scholars that are attending. So a lot of these are STEMM meetings. They may not be specific in lung cancer, but if you can go out there and get the word out about lung cancer and the disparities, then they can go back to their families and talk about, you know, screening and testing and making sure that their family members are aware.

And then, you know, we just published a paper recently that shows the upstream part of biomarker testing is where are we starting at with our cell line? We just did a review of all the lung cancer cell lines. Of over 800 cell lines, majority were European-based. Only 31 cell lines in total were from Black African American populations. None were from Hispanic, none were from Native American, Pacific Islander, none from Alaska Native.

So just think about this. If that is our starting material for all of our biomarker testing and TCGA and databases, then everything we’re developing is on a population that already has great access and outcomes. But they don’t have the greatest disparities. So then you’re getting through doing all these trials, and then you have biomarkers, and you have immunotherapies coming out, and then you’re seeing adverse events in these diverse populations at the end because you don’t have the starting material.

Lisa Hatfield:

And, Dr. Sabari, after hearing Dr. Manley’s comments about that, how do you…or do you know of any approaches or interventions that are aimed at reducing these biomarker disparities? Because maybe they aren’t being acknowledged yet. Maybe they’re only being seen in certain populations.

Dr. Joshua Sabari:

Yeah, I think Dr. Manley hit it on the head. First off, we don’t even know the correct or true numbers for certain mutations in specific patient populations. And I just read an article about patients from Latin America, different rates of EGFR, ALK, and other mutations. You can imagine a study population from Africa, for example. And then obviously studying a population of Black Americans here in the United States as well.

We know that most of the cell lines, most of the data that we’ve had, particularly TCGA  (Tumor Cell Genome Atlas) is from a Caucasian or North European patient population. So I think we need to do better in that sense. I think equally as important, are clinical trial enrollment needs to diversify. Again, it’s mostly women. It’s mostly Caucasian women. We have very, very low rates of Hispanic patients enrolled on clinical trials, Blacks enrolled on clinical trials.

So I think we need to do better in that sense. One thing that we’ve really pushed for in academic medicine is to at least report who is being enrolled on trials so that we can understand is this data generalizable to my own clinical practice? And oftentimes if you look at the clinical characteristics of patients enrolled on the trial, it likely does not match what you see in your own practices.

So we need to do better in that sense. So I think the FDA, and especially pharmaceutical companies, are clearly looking to expand and broaden their inclusion criteria and also access to patients so that we can actually have a more diverse patient population that represents our country enrolled on these trials.

Share Your Feedback

Create your own user feedback survey

When Should Lung Cancer Patients Receive Biomarker Testing?

/in , , , , , , , , /by

When Should Lung Cancer Patients Receive Biomarker Testing? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Biomarker testing is vital for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients, but when should it happen? Expert Dr. Joshua Sabari from NYU Langone discusses cancer cell mutations and ideal timing for biomarker testing for the best patient care.

Download Resource Guide  | Descargar guía de recursos

See More from [ACT]IVATED NSCLC Biomarkers

Related Resources:

Understanding Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: Types, Biomarkers, and Treatment Insights

Understanding Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: Types, Biomarkers, and Treatment Insights

 Navigating Lung Cancer Biomarker Testing | Challenges and Solutions for Timely Access

Navigating Lung Cancer Biomarker Testing | Challenges and Solutions for Timely Access

 Equity in Action | Addressing Biomarker Disparities in Lung Cancer

Equity in Action | Addressing Biomarker Disparities in Lung Cancer

Transcript:

Lisa Hatfield:

And just from the patient perspective, does a patient need to be tested for these biomarkers throughout the course of their treatment, or is it done initially upon diagnosis or before second-line treatment?

Dr. Joshua Sabari:

Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, most mutations are clonal, meaning that they start in the original cancer cell and then the subsequent cells, daughter or son cells, also have that same mutation. So I would recommend doing next-generation sequencing up front in all patients. Now, some people have a specific mutation that we block with a targeted therapy. It could be pills. It could be an infusional targeted therapy. And that might change the sort of milieu or landscape of that mutational profile. So subsequently, after treatment, you may see acquired resistance or secondary mutations that will prevent the therapies from being effective. In those cases, I do recommend re-profiling.

So the most common example in lung cancer is the EGFR mutation, stands for epidermal growth factor receptor. We know that this mutation occurs in 20 to 25 percent of people diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer. If you’re matched to a targeted therapy and don’t unfortunately have progression of disease, it may be very helpful to re-biopsy or re-sequence using both tissue and plasma to help us guide subsequent therapy. But if you do not have a targeted mutation and you’re treated with either chemotherapy and immunotherapy or immunotherapy alone, re-biopsy may not be as helpful in matching to further therapy.

Share Your Feedback

Create your own user feedback survey

Navigating Lung Cancer Biomarker Testing | Challenges and Solutions for Timely Access

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Navigating Lung Cancer Biomarker Testing | Challenges and Solutions for Timely Access from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

To achieve accurate biomarker data for lung cancer patients, what are challenges and solutions? Expert Dr. Joshua Sabari from NYU Langone discusses challenges that can arise during the biomarker testing process, solutions to overcome the challenges, and proactive advice to help ensure optimal patient care. 

[ACT]IVATION TIP

“…not only know your mutation, but speak up for yourself. Speak up for your loved one. Make sure that the correct testing is done and that there is sufficient tissue, both for blood and tissue from the biopsy, to do the correct testing to allow us to potentially match people to the best treatments available.”

Download Resource Guide  | Descargar guía de recursos

See More from [ACT]IVATED NSCLC Biomarkers

Related Resources:

Understanding Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: Types, Biomarkers, and Treatment Insights

Understanding Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: Types, Biomarkers, and Treatment Insights

 When Should Lung Cancer Patients Receive Biomarker Testing?

When Should Lung Cancer Patients Receive Biomarker Testing?

 Equity in Action | Addressing Biomarker Disparities in Lung Cancer

Equity in Action | Addressing Biomarker Disparities in Lung Cancer

Transcript:

Lisa Hatfield:

So, Dr. Sabari, this is a multi-part question here, so I’ll break it down a little bit. What are some of the main challenges in collecting accurate biomarker data, and how can researchers overcome these challenges? And considering the challenges that oncologists face in retrieving testing results at second-line treatment, what technological advancements or procedural changes could streamline the process and ensure timely access to biomarker testing results?

Dr. Joshua Sabari:

So when we talk about biomarker testing, we’re generally talking about testing the tissue, as well as sometimes testing blood or plasma. And it’s important that if you have a good and accurate biopsy with sufficient tissue, that then gives us the ability to select or do the correct biomarker testing. So that’s first and foremost, you know, fine needle aspiration, small aspirations may give us insufficient tissue. You know, whereas if you do a core needle biopsy, whether it be percutaneous through the chest with an image or bronchoscopically through the mouth with a camera, we’re able to get a large sample of tissue.

This will give us the amount of tissue needed to do the correct biomarker testing. We call it next generation sequencing or short for NGS, where we’re able to actually identify the mutations or abnormalities in your DNA. The other type of test we can do is on plasma, where we sometimes call it a liquid biopsy. That’s a simple blood test where, you know, a team will draw about two 10 cc blood tubes, where we’re then able to sequence, you know, DNA in your blood to help identify these alterations.

So having sufficient tissue or having the blood drawn, that’s important. 

But then also having your physician and your clinician and healthcare team order the appropriate test. You know, it’s unfortunate. A lot of folks that I see in my practice have not had adequate testing done in the frontline setting. Oftentimes, clinicians will be in a rush to start systemic treatment, both because patients are symptomatic, but also because they want to get going with treatment for patients. So, you know, stopping your physician, your team and saying, hey, what is my mutational profile? What is my mutational status is an extremely important discussion to have with your clinician. So a lot of times we only see this being done in the second-line setting.

So having that information up front could allow you and your family members to be matched to the best possible therapy. Now, if you’ve started a treatment and you don’t have genetic testing or molecular testing done in the front line, I would then have it done in the second-line setting. So one of my activation tips here is not only know your mutation, but speak up for yourself. Speak up for your loved one. Make sure that the correct testing is done and that there is sufficient tissue, both for blood and tissue from the biopsy, to do the correct testing to allow us to potentially match people to the best treatments available.

Share Your Feedback

Create your own user feedback survey

Understanding Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: Types, Biomarkers, and Treatment Insights

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Understanding Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: Types, Biomarkers, and Treatment Insights from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

How can non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients be empowered when newly diagnosed? Expert Dr. Joshua Sabari from NYU Langone discusses what he shares about NSCLC incidence rates, histology, and biomarkers with patients and families.

[ACT]IVATION TIP

“…know what type of cancer you have, the histology. Whether it be adenocarcinoma or squamous cancer. And equally as important, know your biomarker, what mutation is driving your cancer and what PD-L1 expression your tumor harbors.”

Download Resource Guide  | Descargar guía de recursos

See More from [ACT]IVATED NSCLC Biomarkers

Related Resources:

Navigating Lung Cancer Biomarker Testing | Challenges and Solutions for Timely Access

Navigating Lung Cancer Biomarker Testing | Challenges and Solutions for Timely Access

 When Should Lung Cancer Patients Receive Biomarker Testing?

When Should Lung Cancer Patients Receive Biomarker Testing?

 Equity in Action | Addressing Biomarker Disparities in Lung Cancer

Equity in Action | Addressing Biomarker Disparities in Lung Cancer

Transcript:

Lisa Hatfield:

Dr. Sabari, how do you explain non-small cell lung cancer to your patients and their care partners and families?

Dr. Joshua Sabari:

Yeah, so non-small cell lung cancer is a common cancer in the United States. It’s actually the third most common cancer. And really, you know, non-small cell lung cancer makes up multiple different histologies or types of cancer in the lung. The most common being adenocarcinoma, which is probably about 60 percent to 70 percent of non-small cell. We also hear about squamous cell cancer. And what this means is what is the original cell where the cancer arose? So adenocarcinomas occur in gland cells.

Whereas squamous cancers occur in cells such as the lining part of the lung. And it’s important to know what type of cancer you have because these are treated differently. And when you think about non-small cell lung cancer, we said there are many different ways that people can present. Some people can have shortness of breath, cough, you know, and weight loss. Whereas other people may have no symptoms at all.

So again, the important thing here is that lung cancer can be diagnosed in anybody. All you really need to have is lungs. We see lung cancer in people who’ve smoked in the past, but we also see lung cancer in people who’ve never smoked. And that brings me to a really important point. Once we understand the histology, the type of cancer that it is, we then want to understand some of the biomarkers, right? What are biomarkers?

Biomarkers are distinct sort of entities that help us better understand things about your cancer. And allow us to potentially match people to therapies. So two biomarkers that we generally think about, one is molecular or mutational biomarkers. These are the mutations or abnormalities that led to the cancer. Two kinds of mutations. One is a germline mutation, which is inherited from mom and dad and has a risk of being passed on to your children.

These are uncommon in lung cancer. The second type is called a somatic mutation. And these are mutations that are acquired from the environment, from smoking, for example, from pollution, from radon. And these are not generally inherited mutations. So really important to understand mutational profile and ask your doctor, what is my mutation? Because we can then match people to targeted therapies. The second biomarker that is really important is something called PD-L1 or programmed death-ligand 1. I know it sounds exotic.

But that’s a biomarker that helps us guide how likely immunotherapy will work in your cancer. If the PD-L1 expression is high, greater than 50 percent, immunotherapy may be a very good option. If the PD-L1 expression is low, immunotherapy may sometimes be used, but more commonly in combination with chemotherapy. So my activation tip here is know what type of cancer you have, the histology. Whether it be adenocarcinoma or squamous cancer. And equally as important, know your biomarker, what mutation is driving your cancer and what PD-L1 expression your tumor harbors.

Share Your Feedback

Create your own user feedback survey