From the Journals: A Possible New Strategy for EGFR-mutant Lung Cancer

Each year, nearly 20,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with lung adenocarcinomas that harbor EGFR mutations. While treatment with the EGFR inhibitors erlotinib and gefitinib has improved survival for these patients, their disease invariably progresses because the cancer cells acquire resistance to these drugs.

The results of a phase Ib clinical trial, reported in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, show that a combination of two other EGFR inhibitors, afatinib and cetuximab, yielded clinical responses among a significant number of patients with EGFR-mutant lung cancer resistant to erlotinib and gefitinib.

These data are important because there are currently no U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved molecularly targeted treatment options for patients who have EGFR-mutant lung cancer resistant to erlotinib and gefitinib.

Read the full press release and journal article, or this report in The Oncology Report.