Publications by authors named "Lars Arne Berger"
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) hold great potential to answer key questions of how non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) evolves and develops resistance upon anti-PD-1/PD-L1 treatment. Currently, their clinical utility in NSCLC is compromised by a low detection rate with the established, Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved, EpCAM-based CellSearch System. We tested an epitope-independent method (Parsortix system) and utilized it to assess PD-L1 expression of CTCs from NSCLC patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFForty percent of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients develop brain metastases, resulting in a dismal prognosis. However, patients in an oligo-metastatic brain disease setting seem to have better outcomes. Here, we investigate the possibility of using circulating tumor cells (CTCs) as biomarkers to differentiate oligo-metastatic patients for better risk assessment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: To retrospectively analyze clinical characteristics, prognostic factors, and optimal treatment of patients with bone metastases (BM) of germ cell tumors (GCT) at first relapse.
Methods: One hundred and four GCT patients with BM were identified from the IPFSG database containing 1,594 patients at first relapse. Within this database, all patients experienced unequivocal relapse/progression after cisplatin-based chemotherapy and had received either conventional (CD-CTX) or high-dose chemotherapy (HD-CTX) as first salvage treatment.
Article Synopsis
- - The study evaluated the effectiveness of various salvage treatments for patients with relapsed germ cell cancer, analyzing 143 cases to categorize them according to IPFSG prognostic criteria.
- - Results showed significant correlations between IPFSG risk categories and overall survival, with higher-risk patients facing worse outcomes; after a median follow-up of 19 months, 55% of patients relapsed and 33% died.
- - High-dose chemotherapy (HD-CX) was found to be more effective than conventional-dose chemotherapy (CD-CX) in extending progression-free survival, although the overall survival rates were similar between the two treatment groups.
A considerable proportion of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients will develop central nervous system (CNS) metastases throughout the course of their disease and these manifestations cause significant morbidity and mortality. Accordingly, novel therapies with high efficacy and low toxicity are needed for NSCLC-related CNS metastases. In NSCLC patients with activating epidermal growth factor receptor gene (EGFR) mutations EGFR-specific tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) represent effective and well tolerated modes of therapy, however, it has been unclear whether these drugs are also able to cross the blood-brain-barrier (BBB) and cause remission of CNS metastases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Little data exist on characteristics, treatment, and outcome of patients with bone metastases from germ cell cancer.
Methods: A total of 434 patients with poor prognosis germ cell cancer, who underwent primary high-dose chemotherapy (HD-CTX) within two phase II trials, were retrospectively analyzed.
Results: 40 patients (9%) presented with primary bone metastases.