ASCO 2018 NSCLC highlights —combination therapy is key

SummaryNon-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treatment was booming at this year ’s ASCO 2018 meeting as several well-performed phase III trials with practice-changing potential were presented. Thereby immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) consolidated its major role in the treatment of NSCLC patients without genetic alterations and extended its use by showing impressive data on I CB combination therapies (mainly combined with chemotherapy). Furthermore the role of predictive biomarkers for ICB therapy (Programmed death-ligand 1 [PD-L1] expression, tumor mutational burden [TMB] testing and others) have been further developed and blood-based tests were presented with promisin g data revealing the potential of this minimally invasive method for treatment monitoring and guidance in the future. Nevertheless the best biomarker is still elusive and future research is ongoing and might be a multimodal approach combining different modalities. No major studies concerning new ge netic alterations or innovative targets were presented and the focus in genetic driven NSCLC was the evaluation of combinational approaches (e.g. in epidermal growth factor receptor [EGFR] mutation positve patients, EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor [TKI] plus anti-angiogenic agent or chemotherapy back bone). The presented results showed some benefit for the combinational approach; however toxicity might be an issue and further validation is necessary. Summarizing, ASCO 2018 showed that combinational approaches will b...
Source: Memo - Magazine of European Medical Oncology - Category: Cancer & Oncology Source Type: research