Dr. Paz-Ares Reflects on Major Advancements in Lung Cancer

Luis Paz-Ares, MD, PhD, of Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre, discusses highlights from the 2024 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting.

“We were particularly impressed with some data,” Dr. Paz-Ares said.

He highlighted data from the phase 3 LAURA trial, which showed that osimertinib following definitive chemoradiotherapy demonstrated a statistically significant and “clinically meaningful” improvement in progression-free survival (PFS) for patients with unresectable stage III EGFR-mutated non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

These results were “really good news for patients,” Dr. Paz-Ares said. “Those patients with stage III, in most of the cases, are actually stage IV,” he noted. “They do have metastatic disease even if we are not able to show it at the baseline, and a therapy such as osimertinib seems to prolong the time the disease is under control without progression. We still don’t know if it’s going to impact survival or not. But of course, at least in progression, the impact is really overwhelming.”

Dr. Paz-Ares also highlighted data from the phase 3 CROWN trial, which compared lorlatinib with crizotinib in treatment-naïve, advanced ALK-positive NSCLC. It showed that the median PFS of patients receiving lorlatinib had yet to be reached with 5 years of follow-up, which corresponds to the longest PFS ever reported in advanced NSCLC.

“Those data are really quite remarkable to me, and I think this is becoming the standard of care for most of the patients in this area,” he said.

He also spoke about results from the practice-changing phase 3 ADRIATIC trial, which showed that durvalumab as a consolidation treatment after concurrent platinum-based chemoradiotherapy demonstrated a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in overall survival and PFS compared with placebo in patients with limited-stage small cell lung cancer.

“You’re actually avoiding progression and death in 1 out of 4 patients,” Dr. Paz-Ares said. “[It has a] huge impact … this is becoming a standard of care for sure.”