PEARL (NCT03003962) is an open-label, phase 3 study comparing first-line durvalumab monotherapy with chemotherapy in patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (mNSCLC [EGFR/ALK wild type]) with PD-L1 tumor cell (TC) membrane expression status ≥25%. We report the final analysis of PEARL.

Lung cancer screening (LCS) using low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) reduces mortality. However, in high tuberculosis-burden countries (HTBC), there are concerns about high false-positive rates due to persistent lung lesions from prior tuberculosis (TB) infections. This study aims to evaluate the screen-positive rate (SPR) of LDCT screening in HTBC.

Patients with ALK-positive NSCLC developing resistance to second-generation inhibitors have limited treatment options. Deulorlatinib is a highly brain-penetrant, new-generation ALK/ROS1 inhibitor. We evaluated the safety, efficacy and pharmacokinetics of deulorlatinib in ALK-positive NSCLC.

Prophylactic cranial irradiation (PCI) has long been used for small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) to reduce the risk of brain metastases and potentially improve overall survival. However, recent immunotherapy trials have provided limited data on its impact, as few patients were treated with PCI. The ADRIATIC trial demonstrated improved outcomes with consolidation immunotherapy in limited-stage SCLC, and PCI was a stratification factor. Notably, patients receiving PCI in both arms had better outcomes compared to those who did not. Ongoing studies, such as EORTC-1901 PRIMALung (NCT04790253) and SWOG 1827-MAVERICK (NCT04155034), are further investigating PCI's role in the era of immunotherapy, highlighting its potential importance in evolving treatment strategies.

With the implementation of low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) screening, multiple pulmonary tumor nodules (MPTN) are diagnosed with increasing frequency and the selection of surgical treatments versus systemic therapies has become challenging on a daily basis in clinical practice. In the presence of multiple carcinomas, especially adenocarcinomas, pathologically determined to be of pulmonary origin, the distinction between separate primary lung carcinomas (SPLCs) and intrapulmonary metastases (IPMs) is important for staging, management, and prognostication.

Multi-omic studies have identified three molecular separated pulmonary carcinoid (PC) subgroups (A1, A2, B) with distinctive mRNA expression profiles (e.g. OTP/ASCL1/HNF1A). We aimed to establish an immunohistochemical (IHC) biomarker panel that enables subgroup identification, and assessment of its potential clinical relevance.

We assessed the association between a genome-wide polygenic risk score (PRS) developed for lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) risk and mutation on the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene in 998 East Asian never-smoking female LUAD cases (518 EGFR-positive; 480 EGFR-negative) and 4,544 never-smoking controls using case-case and multinomial regression analyses. We found that the PRS was more strongly associated with EGFR-positive LUAD compared to EGFR-negative LUAD, where the association between the fourth quartile of the PRS and EGFR-positive LUAD (OR=8.63, 95% CI:5.67, 13.14) was significantly higher than the association between the fourth quartile of the PRS with EGFR-negative LUAD (OR=3.50, 95% CI: 2.44, 5.00) (p-heterogeneity=3.66x10). Our findings suggest that germline genetic susceptibility may be differentially associated with LUAD in never-smoking female East Asian patients depending on the cancer's mutation status, which may have important public health and clinical implications.

Despite the reduction in mortality shown by Low dose computer tomography (LDCT) lung cancer screening, the uptake is still low. Patients undergo chest imaging for several other medical reasons, and this is a unique opportunity to detect lung nodules.

Chemotherapy continues to be the standard treatment for patients non-eligible to targeted or immune-based therapies; however, treatment resistance remains a major clinical challenge. We previously found that expression levels of DSTYK, a poorly explored dual serine/threonine and tyrosine kinase frequently amplified in cancer, identifies lung cancer patients exhibiting poor response to immune checkpoint inhibitors and showed that its inhibition sensitizes to immunotherapy. Seeking to explore the potential of DSTYK targeting in additional indications, we investigated the functional relevance and actionability of DSTYK in lung cancer chemoresistance. We show that DSTYK depletion specifically sensitizes lung cancer cells to taxane-based chemotherapy, particularly in combination with carboplatin. Mechanistically, DSTYK ablation remodels the cytoskeleton and impairs distant invasion and metastatic outgrowth in vivo. DSTYK downregulation sensitizes both primary and metastatic lung tumors to chemoimmunotherapy treatment leading to tumor regression in mouse models. Consistently, clinical data of early - in the neoadjuvant and adjuvant settings- and advanced lung cancer patients show a strong correlation between DSTYK amplification and taxane resistance, underscoring the clinical significance of our findings to inform treatment decision-making. Collectively, our data indicates that DSTYK amplification may be a predictor of resistance to taxane-based treatments and represents an actionable target for these patients.

Poly (ADP-ribose) inhibitors, including olaparib, upregulate programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1), which may increase efficacy of anti-PD-(L)1 therapies.

Lorlatinib is a potent, brain-penetrant, third-generation inhibitor of anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) and ROS1 tyrosine kinases with broad coverage of ALK resistance mutations. We present overall survival (OS) and long-term safety of lorlatinib in patients with advanced ALK-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) from the final analyses of the pivotal phase 2 study.