A Career in Lung Cancer: Pushing Beyond Chemotherapy.

The landscape of treatments for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has evolved dramatically over the past 3 decades. A better understanding of the disease biology and identification of actionable genetic alterations heralded an era of targeted therapies that has led to unprecedented survival benefits in patients with oncogene-driven NSCLC. More recent breakthroughs in immunotherapy led to the development of immune checkpoint inhibitors that have changed the treatment paradigm for patients with advanced NSCLC because of their ability to produce durable responses, resulting in improved survival outcomes.

An Open-Label Phase II Trial of Bevacizumab plus Docetaxel and Gemcitabine in Advanced, Previously Untreated Nonsquamous Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer.

Lessons Learned: The combination of bevacizumab with docetaxel-gemcitabine resulted in unacceptable toxicity, particularly a high rate of pulmonary toxicity (30%).Despite promising efficacy, excessive toxicity of this regimen does not support its use in patients with advanced nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer.

Background: Prior to immunotherapy, standard treatment for advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) was platinum doublet chemotherapy.

Post-treatment changes in hematological parameters predict response to nivolumab monotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer patients.

Background: The absolute neutrophil count (ANC), absolute lymphocyte count (ALC), absolute monocyte count (AMC) and neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) are known markers of inflammation. We evaluated whether ANC, ALC, AMC and NLR, both before and after treatment with nivolumab, are indicative markers of overall survival (OS) and evaluated change in NLR as a predictive marker of response in non -small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients treated with nivolumab.

Methods: A total of 109 patients with advanced NSCLC treated with nivolumab were included.