Real-World French Prospective Study on Lung Cancer Highlights Progress in NSCLC Since 2000

Didier Debieuvre, MD, of the Groupe Hospitalier de la Région de Mulhouse et Sud-Alsace L’Hôpital Emile Muller, joined Lung Cancers Today at the IASLC 2024 World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC) to discuss findings from a real-world French prospective study on lung cancer.

The study has been conducted in non-academic public hospitals every 10 years since 2000. Dr. Debieuvre presented data on the three-year survival rate in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) from the 2020 cohort, as well as comparisons with the 2000 and 2010 cohorts.

“Because these cohorts are made with the same methodology, they are comparable,” he explained.

Each cohort includes thousands of patients, with the 2020 cohort including nearly 9,000 patients from 82 centers, with around 7,800 of those patients having NSCLC. Among the 2020 cohort of patients with NSCLC, the three-year survival rate was around 35%, with a median overall survival of 17.4 months.

“New treatments, especially targeted therapy and immunotherapy, improve overall survival,” Dr. Debieuvre said. “And with these three cohorts, we show that in real life, we have the same improvement, because in the whole population of three cohorts, three-year survival increases from 16.9% in 2000, to 21% in 2010, and 35.4% in 2020.”

He also highlighted the data on adenocarcinoma, which is the histological type with the most-improved prognosis in the real-world study. However, when it comes to small cell lung cancer survival, the study has shown “no improvement in 20 years,” he said.

Dr. Debieuvre concluded by reflecting on the long-term data from the real-world study and how survival outcomes have changed since it began.

“With this trial, we show clearly the improvement since 20 years [ago] and moreover since 10 years [ago] with the arrival of targeted therapy and immunotherapy, especially with adenocarcinoma,” he concluded. “We are showing in real life what we show in randomized clinical trials.”