Video information:
Are there new developments in treating metastatic lung cancer? Dr. David Carbone of Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center has much to report. From new medications that directly impact quality of life, rapid research to patients who are outliving their original prognosis, Dr. Carbone weighs in on progress.
Transcript:
Dr. Carbone:
There's a lot of research that's coming out every week, every month right now that will directly impact the quality and quantity of life of lung cancer patients. It's new drugs that are better than the old ones at targeting genetic abnormalities, drugs that are targeting new genetic abnormalities, and drugs that have lower toxicity, longer efficacy, better penetration into the brain to affect patients with brain metastases or even prevent them from getting brain metastases. So that's a very exciting aspect of targeted therapy development right now.
But I think the newest development which is very exciting to all of us is the immunotherapy progress, and that has shown efficacy now even as the first treatment that lung cancer patients get instead of chemotherapy. And there are patients from early trials with these drugs that still have a sustained, complete remission without ever seeing chemotherapy now five, six, seven, eight, years after their diagnosis.
And this is incredibly exciting to me, that there could be a subset of patients with advanced metastatic lung cancer who have a short course of therapy with a minimally toxic drug that causes a complete remission that lasts for years, and this is transformational.
Published By :
Patient Power
Date :
Apr 04, 2017
