Biomarker Testing for NSCLC/SCLC - Early and Late Stage - 03/10/23 - Lung Cancer Living Room

On this Special Edition of the Lung Cancer Living Room, Dr. Benjamin Levy of Johns Hopkins joins host Danielle Hicks, GO2 for Lung Cancer's Chief Patient Officer to discuss the importance and advances in molecular testing, specifically the more comprehensive next generation sequencing, in understanding and treating your cancer. They discuss how biomarkers are related to specific targeted therapies and how those have a major impact on patient outcomes, which is why it's so important you ensure you get tested and ask your doctor about the results. This is particularly true in community hospital settings where biomarker testing isn't necessarily automatically done. To that point, they discuss who typically orders biomarker testing and how it ideally should be handled. They also go over the value of the newer blood-based biopsies - what they can and can't tell us. Tissue biopsies are still the gold standard and they discuss why that's the case and go into some detail on the different ways that solid tumor biopsies are collected. Regarding biomarker testing options, Dr. Levy explains why single gene (or limited panel) genomic testing is less optimal than comprehensive testing (or next generation sequencing). They explore the differences between the testing needs for small cell and non-small cell lung cancer, as well as why biomarker testing is now seen as important for earlier-stage lung cancer patients as well. This is seen in the ADAURA trial results where adjuvant osimertinib was seen to meaningfully improve overall survival for early stage EGFR non-small cell lung cancer. On that note, they talk more generally about clinical trials and how the number of drugs being developed now make them more important and valuable than ever. The differences between immunotherapy versus targeted therapy are pointed out, and why and when you'd choose one option over the other - including benefits of immunotherapy for small cell patients.

Speaker:
Benjamin P. Levy, MD, Associate Professor of Oncology, Clinical Director of Medical Oncology, Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Sibley Memorial Hospital