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CHICAGO-Although concomitant platinum-based systemic chemotherapy and thoracic radiotherapy have yielded the best short-term survival rates for patients with limited-stage small-cell lung cancer (SCLC), this approach produces few long-term survivors because local failure and distant metastasis are common.

NEW YORK-A program to screen for lung cancer that was remarkably successful in recruiting participants has produced some surprises and taught the investigators some lessons about what to expect from large-scale lung cancer screening.

In an era of information "overload" for the practicing oncologist, keeping up with the latest therapies for the many distinct clinical scenarios that arise in daily practice can be quite a challenge. Thus, a concise synthesis of the current knowledge in a field, such as provided in Lung Cancer Therapy Annual 2000 by Drs. Heine Hansen and Paul Bunn, can be quite useful. These authors, whose clinical expertise and contributions to lung cancer therapy are internationally acknowledged, offer a complete review of the literature pertaining to lung cancer therapy from the year 1999, including a review of abstracts from major meetings. A brief summary is provided at the end, outlining standard, accepted strategies based on histologic and stage-by-stage criteria. This text serves as a reference that summarizes the major existing literature, evaluates the strength of the evidence, and makes reasonable recommendations on how to proceed with clinical care.

TOKYO, Japan-Large, multicenter trials underway in the United Kingdom are questioning whether chemotherapy is actually worth it for patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to Jeremy Steele, MD, of the Division of Hematology, Oncology and Imaging, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London.

Ravi Salgia, MD, PhD, and colleagues at Dana-Farber Cancer Center presented an encouraging follow-up report on an initial clinical trial of Cell Genesys’ GVAX lung cancer vaccine at the Ninth World Conference on Lung Cancer in Tokyo,

NEW YORK-The development of computers and diagnostic platforms is facilitating mass screening for lung cancer not only with helical CT but also with sputum cytology, according to Melvyn S. Tockman, MD, PhD, professor of medicine and director, Program in Molecular Screening, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, University of South Florida, Tampa.

WASHINGTON-California’s aggressive tobacco control efforts, which include raising tobacco taxes and using some of that revenue for prevention efforts, appear to have played a significant role in the state’s decrease in lung cancer rates, according to a new collaborative study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the California Department of Health Services.

NEW YORK-Thinner multislice CT scans are increasing the effectiveness of lung cancer screening, a German investigator said at the 3rd International Conference on Screening for Lung Cancer. U. Joseph Schoepf, MD, of the Institute of Clinical Radiology, University of Munich, showed images from 1 mm slices achieved with the Siemens Volume Zoom. "Obviously, we use the fastest rotation mode that we have available," he said. "That’s a 500 millisecond rotation. With a collimation of 1 mm, that allows us to cover the entire chest in a single breath-hold of about 20 to 25 seconds."

Survival in lung cancer patients has not improved over the past 2 decades. Irinotecan (Camptosar, CPT-11), a semisynthetic analog of the quinoline-based alkaloid camptothecin, is one of several new drugs that have demonstrated promising activity in the treatment of lung cancer in recent years. This article gives a brief overview of the mechanism, development history, and current uses of this agent. [ONCOLOGY 15(Suppl 1):6-7, 2001]

TOKYO-A platinum-based regimen including the investigational antifolate pemetrexed disodium (Alimta) is active and well tolerated in stage IIIb/IV non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to the final results of a phase II trial conducted by the National Cancer Institute of Canada Clinical Trials Group and presented at the 9th World Conference on Lung Cancer. The drug may also represent a new option for patients with mesothelioma.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is recruiting 3,000 current and former smokers for its Lung Screening Study, a year-long study of spiral computed tomography (CT) scans for lung cancer screening. Although the study will not determine if the

HAMBURG, Germany-GLOB-1 trial results, reported at the 25th Congress of the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO), have confirmed the combination of vinorelbine (Navelbine) and cisplatin (Platinol) as a chemotherapy reference standard in metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), raising questions about the role of three-drug combinations in this setting.

TOKYO-A regimen of paclitaxel (Taxol) and vinorelbine (Navelbine) in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) appears to yield results similar to those with platinum-based regimens, according to phase I/II studies presented at the 9th World Conference on Lung Cancer.

TOKYO-Neoadjuvant therapy with the taxane docetaxel (Taxotere) is well tolerated and boosts survival over local treatment alone in patients with radically treatable, locally advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), investigators reported at the Ninth World Conference on Lung Cancer.

The world’s population is aging. Older age is associated with an increase in the incidence of cancer, especially cancer of the breast, lung, prostate, and colon. The management of older patients with cancer is biased by the