“Did you smoke?” is a common, and not always easy question, which people are asked when they get lung cancer. It may not be a nice question, but it is increasingly important for deciding your treatment.
Smoking is, of course, the primary cause of lung cancer, but non-smokers can, and do, develop this disease. Researchers have made progress in understanding the differences between lung cancer in smokers versus non-smokers, says Dr. Ronald Natale, a medical oncologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and they’re developing targeted treatments that will be able to address the genetic drivers of lung cancer in non-smokers.
Targeted cancer therapy attacks very specific molecules within a tumor that are involved in its growth and spread.
Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) is approved for treating lung cancers that express PD-L1 or Programmed death-ligand 1. This therapy blocks a protein called PD-L1, which hides and protects the tumor from the immune system.
Nivolumab (Opdivo) is approved in combination with Ipilimumab (Yervoy) for the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer whose tumors express PD-L1 (≥1%) with no EGFR or ALK genomic tumor aberrations.
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.
Dr. Ronald Natale is Director of the Lung Cancer Clinical Research Program at the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Read More
“Did you smoke?” is a common, and not always easy question, which people are asked when they get lung cancer. It may not be a nice question, but it is increasingly important for deciding your treatment.
Smoking is, of course, the primary cause of lung cancer, but non-smokers can, and do, develop this disease. Researchers have made progress in understanding the differences between lung cancer in smokers versus non-smokers, says Dr. Ronald Natale, a medical oncologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and they’re developing targeted treatments that will be able to address the genetic drivers of lung cancer in non-smokers.
Read More Targeted cancer therapy attacks very specific molecules within a tumor that are involved in its growth and spread.
Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) is approved for treating lung cancers that express PD-L1 or Programmed death-ligand 1. This therapy blocks a protein called PD-L1, which hides and protects the tumor from the immune system.
Nivolumab (Opdivo) is approved in combination with Ipilimumab (Yervoy) for the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer whose tumors express PD-L1 (≥1%) with no EGFR or ALK genomic tumor aberrations.
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.
Dr. Ronald Natale is Director of the Lung Cancer Clinical Research Program at the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Read More
