PracticeUpdate: Oncology - Winter 2018

CONFERENCE COVERAGE 24

American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting JUNE 1–5 2018 • CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, USA

© ASCO/Rodney White 2018

Lung Cancer Studies at ASCO 2018 Interview with Wilfried Eberhardt MD by Farzanna S Haffizulla MD, FACP, FAMWA

Dr. Haffizulla: Can you highlight for us some of the most important lung cancer abstracts released at ASCO this year? Dr. Eberhardt: The major point that comes up here at this year’s ASCO conference is the first-line treatment of advanced non-small cell lung cancer. There are at least 5 abstracts that have major importance in this field, and they pretty much fit also into the background of what we have learned at the AACR already. So we now have a big picture of how to treat patients in a first line situation. Dr. Haffizulla: Are any of these abstracts that were pre- sented at this year’s ASCO practice-changing at all? Dr. Eberhardt: If you take all of the abstracts together in this field, in the first-line situation where we have the majority of these trials looking at the combination of conventional chemotherapy and immunotherapy, and does immunotherapy add to chemotherapy. So, I think on the whole, we can say it does and that is based on the abstract we see here. But also we’ve learned that there are markers, like a tumor mutation burden that can define a population, a selective population of patients in first line if they have high tumor mutational burden where immunotherapy combination could be also a way to move forward in the future.

Dr. Haffizulla: Based on the data that was presented, or even lack of data here, presented at ASCO, which aspects of lung cancer cure continue to represent an era of unmet need? Dr. Eberhardt: We’ve learned now how to treat first-line non-small cell lung cancer without any driver mutations, as I said. That is something that we talked about. This is the major point here at ASCO, but small cell lung cancer is still an unmet need, and there’s not so much going on in small cell, unfortunately. And there is some data that is not yet published, but it seems to be that some phase III trials have come out negative in that setting. Dr. Haffizulla: Any additional information you’d like to share in this space? Dr. Eberhardt: I mean, this the first…the first results of the targeted agents in small cell seem to be negative. Dr. Haffizulla: Okay, so more studies needed? More information? Dr. Eberhardt: Yes, more studies needed. We have to select the patient population also in small cell. We haven’t learned about immunotherapy in small cell. We are waiting for those data, so there is still a lot to come. www.practiceupdate.com/c/69182

PRACTICEUPDATE ONCOLOGY