First-line therapeutic options for advanced non-small-cell lung cancer in the molecular medicine era

ABSTRACT:  Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide in both sexes, expected to account, in the near future, for more than 30% of all cancer-related deaths. Recently, improvements in the systemic therapy of non-small-cell lung cancer according to histology and tumor molecular characteristics led to a progressive prolongation of survival, more clinically meaningful in selected groups of patients with tumors harboring specific genomic alterations. As the search for individualized therapeutic approaches could represent one of the potential ways to improve survival expectancy of non-small-cell lung cancer patients with advanced disease stage, the aim of this review is to discuss how currently to select the best front-line therapeutic strategy. </jats:p

Italian multicenter survey to evaluate the opinion of patients and their reference clinicians on the &quot;tolerance&quot; to targeted therapies already available for non-small cell lung cancer treatment in daily clinical practice

INTRODUCTION: The introduction of targeted therapies in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treatment has led to emerging toxicities, whose management and impact on quality-of-life (QoL) is not clearly defined. Aim of this Italian multicenter survey was to highlight any discrepancy between patients’ and clinicians’ perception of such toxicities in order to improve their management. METHODS: From October 2013 to April 2014, 133 NSCLC advanced patients, treated with targeted therapies, were consecutively enrolled to assess toxicities and QoL with dedicated questionnaires. One hundred and sixteen patients were included in the final analysis, having attended three consecutive evaluations (T0, T1, T2), starting at least 15 days after the biological treatment. The survey required monthly compilation of both physicians and patients’ questionnaires, basing adverse event evaluation on CTCAE version 4.0. RESULTS: Most of the patients received either an EGFR-TKI or an anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) inhibitor as targeted therapy (84.5% and 13.8%, respectively). At every checkpoint (T0, T1, T2) a significant difference in terms of perception of targeted therapies-related toxicities of any type and grade was described (P value =0.0001 in all cases). This difference was more pronounced for skin toxicity, fatigue and diarrhea. Furthermore, also the assessment of QoL revealed contrasting data between patients and clinicians, mainly QoL reported as good by the majority of patients and daily activities considered as slightly influenced by targeted therapies. CONCLUSIONS: In our knowledge, this is the first prospective survey in patients and doctors specifically designed for targeted therapies in advanced NSCLC. The results show an underestimation of toxicities by clinicians when compared with patients, the difference being greater for adverse events more strongly associated with daily life and QoL. Further studies are needed to confirm our first results. The discrepancy in perception of targeted therapies-related toxicities should be a result from which to start thinking about a new approach in their management

Imaging and screening in lung cancer

Lung cancer is the main cause of death for neoplasia in the world. Hence it’s growing the necessity to investigate screening tests to detect tumoral lesions at the early stages: several trials have been performed to establish the best method, target and frequence of the screening to offer. CT, X-ray, PET, sputum citology and CAD software are here analyzed, together with the associated statistics and bias