EGFR-Mutated Lung Cancer Video Perspectives
Erminia Massarelli, MD, PhD, MS
Massarelli reports receiving honoraria from AstraZeneca and Merck; consulting and/or advising Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation, Genentech/Roche, Janssen Scientific Affairs, Merck, and Sanofi; serving on a speakers' bureau for AstraZeneca; receiving research funding from AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Genentech, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Pfizer, and Tessa Therapeutics; and receiving travel, accommodations, and expenses from AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Genentech/Roche, Merck, and Pfizer.
VIDEO: Challenges in treating EGFR-mutated lung cancer
Transcript
Editor’s note: This is a previously posted video, and the below is an automatically generated transcript to be used for informational purposes. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.
One of the major challenges in treating EGFR-mutated small cell lung cancer is that, you know, within the EGFR-mutated small cell lung cancer there is a heterogeneity of cancer. So, the cancers are actually a very slow growing. They respond for EGFR, two EGFR types in tyrosine kinase inhibitors for a longer, you know, a long time. We do have patients responding years. You know, I still have patients responding since the first EGFR, you know, like are lot for example. But unfortunately, then there are the ones that have, you know, they usually respond to EGFR TKIs for about, you know, between 18 months and, you know, say two years, that's probably the average, and then you start progressing. But then, you know, they can be rescued with, chemotherapies, but then they're the ones that unfortunately have, you know, a very short time to respond to different types and tyrosine kinase inhibitors inhibitor.
And the main challenge I think is that these patients are young. So, they, you know, even if you tell them, okay, you know, you're going to have a two-year response, you're going to have a survival three years. Which is, you know, now with the new data is three years and also longer. But, you know, to a 30 year, 40-year-old patient is otherwise healthy, you know, it's still a crazy prognosis.
So, I think, you know, our challenge is to really prolong, you know, the lives of these patients. The other challenge is that they tend to develop pre-metastases. Once develop pre-metastases, other than osimertinib (Tagrisso; AstaZeneca) and other EGFR and tyrosine kinase inhibitors there are currently under development. You know, there are other, and radiation therapy, of course. We don't have at the moment very good alternatives for controlling the pre-metastases.
