The Changing Landscape of NSCLC Clinical Care

Benjamin Levy, MD: I would say that the field is getting really complicated. There’s tremendous science going in and a lot of clinical trials that are ongoing. This is a very exciting time to be in lung cancer but a very confusing one. I think 1 of the most important take-home messages from all of this is to make sure that you genotype your lung cancer patient. Make sure you understand the genetic underpinnings before you make a treatment decision. In patients with ALK driver mutations, these patients should probably be offered some type of chemotherapy with or without immunotherapy, or immunotherapy alone.

For patients who then progress on these treatments, we have a lot of work to do, but I would make the argument that if they’re fit and motivated, these patients should receive the best drugs available. And I think at this time docetaxel with ramucirumab are probably the 2 agents that I would use. I would encourage everyone to continue to try to stay as up-to-date as possible because this is a very exciting yet confusing time. But that’s good for our patients. It’s a win for our patients, and it’s a win for the doctors as well.

Anne Tsao, MD: Right now in non-small cell lung cancer, it’s very exciting. There have been enormous paradigm shifts in terms of how we’re treating our patients, and we have so many more drugs that we can use in our arsenal for this treatment of this disease. And so what I try to tell all my patients is that we’re trying to make this into a chronic disease. And as long as they stay healthy and well, and their performance status is good, we can try to find agents that can control their disease. And there’s definitely hope. Because we have so many new therapies and the time, science, and technology are moving so quickly now. So we can do things today that we couldn’t even achieve 2 years a