Tag: lung cancer

Immunotherapy now approved as front-line treatment for certain subset of patients with non-small cell lung cancer

November 2, 2016 | News & Notes

The KEYNOTE-024 trial was recently published that will be a game-changer for the first-line treatment of metastatic non-small cell lung cancer. In a certain subset of patients with PD-L1 expression over 50% (PD-L1 is a marker of immune activity within the tumor), patients were randomized to receive either standard chemotherapy or pembrolizumab (an immune therapy… Read more »

“liquid biopsy” shown to accurately detect genetic mutations in lung cancer patients

October 5, 2016 | News & Notes

In lung cancer patients, it is important to test for “targetable mutations” in the cancer tissue. Targetable mutations are specific DNA changes to cancer cells that cause specific proteins to signal cancer cells to grow. These are important to test for because we have medications that turn off these proteins that are more effective than… Read more »