Lung Cancer Clinicians Reflect on Major Updates From American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting

A roundtable discussion, moderated by Millie Das, MD, covered challenges, advances, and future directions for the diagnosis, treatment, and management of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), as well as critical clinical trial data and updates from the 2024 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting. Dr. Das was joined by Ticiana Leal, MD, Martin Dietrich, MD, PhD, and Kent Shih, MD.

In the final segment of this roundtable series, the panel discusses key developments and advances in lung cancer treatment from the 2024 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting.

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Dr. Das: Any parting thoughts on what you’ve heard at [the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting] this year and some of the data that we saw in the plenary?

We saw exciting lung cancer abstracts presented in the plenary, which I believe are going to be practice changing, and of course, now we’re seeing longer-term data from some of the trials that I think are really important and will continue to inform our treatment conversations with our patients. But any other sort of last-minute thoughts?

Dr. Leal: I guess from my standpoint, I mean we saw a lot of really interesting and amazing data from the clinical trials that we’ve been working on, or that we’ve been waiting for, but a highlight from the plenary today would be ADRIATIC for limited-stage small cell lung cancer. Again, adding immunotherapy in the consolidation setting for patients with limited-stage small cell lung cancer after concurrent chemo-radiation, [we’re] seeing that really impressive survival benefit.

I was very impressed with those results: Progression-free survival benefit, overall survival benefit, definitely practice changing. And again, I think immunotherapy is here to stay. All of the things that we are talking about for our patients with non-small cell lung cancer, I think we also need to consider for patients with small cell lung cancer.

And I thought the discussant, Dr. Lauren Byers was also very insightful, just talking about how this is amazing, but we got to continue to work on biomarkers for small cell as well. And will there be a time where we can personalize treatment for small cell lung cancer as well, and [we should] really try to identify the optimal therapies for patients. It was very exciting data today. I was really happy to be able to be a part of that.

Dr. Das: Yeah, it’s very exciting.

Dr. Shih: Big picture for me, the plenary session, there was 2 neoadjuvant presentations, 2 adjuvant presentations, a palliative care presentation. I think neoadjuvant is here to stay, right? Lung, breast, it’s been in breast and rectal now, melanoma, esophageal. So, it tells me that I think our drugs are getting better, we’re getting better at systemic disease, so we’re importing our drugs earlier on. That’s exciting to me.

Dr. Dietrich: I agree. I think that the use of PD-1, PD-L1 in the neoadjuvant setting with an existing unperturbed tumor environment is certainly improving. LAURA, adjuvant after chemo[radiotherapy] for osimertinib was very impressive data, [with] hazard ratios that we really have never seen before in lung cancer. I think the 5-year data for lorlatinib was amazing. I think progression-free survival well above 50% at 5 years was amazing. ADRIATIC is certainly practice changing, starting Monday when we get back to clinic.

But I’m also reassured about the long-term follow-ups. And I think that’s a signal that we’ve seen with CTLA-4, that the durability of response is enhanced with CTLA-4. And I agree that we didn’t study this specifically in PD-L1 negatives, but 3 positive trials that show a very similar picture of response, sort of make a rule for my clinic in the absence of better, and more dedicated information. So I’m very excited about all the progress that we’ve seen. I think this was a very productive [American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting], and I was glad I was here.

Dr. Das: Thank you so much for joining us today.

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View the first segment of this roundtable series here.

View the second segment of this roundtable series here.

View the third segment of this roundtable series here.

View the fourth segment of this roundtable series here.

View the fifth segment of this roundtable series here.

View the sixth segment of this roundtable series here.

View the seventh segment of this roundtable series here.