“Worldwide, lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related death. There have been many advances in the treatment of NSCLC over the past two decades, but we need to keep the focus on new therapies to continue to make progress and treat this deadly disease.”
According to the authors of the study, the molecular targeted medicines and immunotherapies for NSCLC enhance outcomes; but most severe NSCLC cases develop resistance to existing treatments and continue to progress. Therefore, researchers highlighted the recent innovative medicines and combinations created to address this challenge and to treat NSCLC, as well as indicated the current understanding of resistance mechanisms and the need for incorporating genomic data into clinical studies.
The authors emphasize the necessity of the future scope of neoadjuvant and maintenance combination therapy techniques in the treatment of early-stage illness. According to the researchers, the major hurdle for the effective development of rational combination medicines will be the use of robust predictive biomarkers for a well-defined strategy for each patient.
Chris Boshoff, MD, PhD, Chief Development Officer, Oncology, Pfizer Global Product Development, and senior author of the perspective said, “The biggest impact on long-term outcome for NSCLC could be the use of rational combination therapies tackling early disease, to maximize tumor eradication. We provide our perspective on the latest insights into the management of lung cancer and emphasize the potential of personalized combination immunotherapy-based regiments to improve outcomes further.”
Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, Head of Medical Oncology at Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital, Disease Program chief at Yale, and one of the senior authors of the study, expressed hopes for the new research. He said, “We expect a continued trajectory of improved outcomes for NSCLC and lung cancer in general. But expansion and further investment in collaborative research using big data sets between industry, academia, government, and other non-profit organizations are essential to continue our promising journey towards a cure.”
