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VIDEO: Targeted therapy, checkpoint inhibitors show promise for lung cancer–associated brain metastases
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CHICAGO — Manmeet Ahluwalia, MD, a HemOnc Today Editorial Board member and director of the brain metastases research program at Cleveland Clinic, offers background on the developments of medical therapeutics in brain metastases from lung cancer presented at the ASCO Annual Meeting.
“The most common cause of brain metastases is lung cancer,” he said. “Over 15% of patients with brain metastases have lung cancer origin. Among patients with lung cancer with metastatic disease, 25% of them have brain metastases at presentation. This is more than any other tumor type that we know of.”
Ahluwalia discussed studies designed to evaluate targeted therapies and immune checkpoint blockades for these patients.
“What is going to be interesting to see is the durability of responses in these patients when these agents are used by themselves,” he added. “It will be interesting to see how the combination of radiosurgery with some of these targeted agents will result compared with the targeted agents alone. What will also be interesting to see is what the toxicity when we combine some of these agents.” – by Kristie L. Kahl
Disclosure: Ahluwalia reports honoraria from Elsevier, Itamar Medical and Prime Oncology; consultant fees from Abbvie, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Incyte and Monteris Medical; and research funding from Boehringer Ingelheim, Lilly/ImClone, Novartis, Novocure, Spectrum Pharmaceuticals and TRACON Pharma.