How Progress in Care is Affecting Patients With Lung Cancer

Lung cancer care has advanced at an unprecedented pace in recent years, with new therapies continually reshaping the treatment landscape, according to Dr. Jacob Sands.

To delve further into this topic, Sands sat down for an interview with CURE, in which, he discussed progress across the lung cancer treatment landscape following the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of Datroway (datopotamab deruxtecan-dlnk) for those with locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer that has an epidermal growth factor receptor mutation.

Sands is the associate chief of the Lowe Center for Thoracic Oncology, oncology medical director of International Patient Center, and a physician at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, as well as an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, both of which are located in Boston, Massachusetts.

Transcript

How would you describe the pace of progress in lung cancer treatment, and what should patients understand about how their care options might evolve over time?

One thing to acknowledge is that this field is moving fast. We first had targeted therapy for EGFR mutations a little over 15 years ago, when we saw the big study that clearly showed we were able to target this. In just 15 years, we now have an array of different targets and a number of different treatment options; in many cases, multiple treatment options for each of those targets. And now, we're adding a whole new class of drugs with antibody-drug conjugates.

So, for anyone I'm counseling about their cancer, someone with a new diagnosis, know that your first treatment will hopefully work for many years. However, at some point, if things start growing, it's likely that the field will have evolved again. The work is ongoing. The advances being made in cancer treatment are happening at a much faster pace than what many in the public realize. Even physicians outside of medical oncology or oncology-related specialties often don't realize how much is happening right now. With rare exceptions, anybody diagnosed with any lung cancer right now is getting a drug that is new within the last five to ten years.

The field is moving fast, and I'm very optimistic about further advances as we go forward. We're talking about one significant step forward now, but I trust there will be many more to follow, even in the few years ahead at this pace. The field is evolving, and we're working as fast as we can to develop new and better treatments. We're not stopping until we can control everyone's cancer.

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