Hossein Borghaei, DO, MS, Discusses Future Research Directions in NSCLC Based on the Lung-MAP Trial

At the 2022 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting, CancerNetwork^® spoke with Hossein Borghaei, DO, MS, chief of the Division of Thoracic Medical Oncology, professor of the Department of Hematology/Oncology, co-director of the Immune Monitoring Facility, and the Gloria and Edmund M. Dunn Chair in Thoracic Oncology at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, about where future research efforts might be focused following the phase 2 Lung-MAP trial (NCT03851445) S1800A substudy (NCT03971474) which was presented at the conference and analyzed pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and ramucirumab (Cyramza) in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer.

He stated that if the findings from the phase 2 trial could be confirmed in the phase 3 study, that a new and impactful standard of care could be introduced to this patient population.

Transcript:

It gives us an option in the second-line setting for patients who have some level of response to initial chemotherapy/immunotherapy or even immunotherapy/immunotherapy approaches. Then [patients] unfortunately, develop disease progression after that because right now, the standard is chemotherapy—for the most part, docetaxel. Docetaxel plus ramucirumab gives you a slightly better clinical efficacy, but nothing significant. Having another option that’s not necessarily docetaxel based—it’s a little bit of a tougher drug to work with, and could have a significant impact on quality of life for the patients. If the phase 3 trial confirms the results of the phase 2 trial and we have an overall survival advantage, that could be huge. We haven’t been able to successfully show that a new combination or even a new drug can replace the current standard of care which is docetaxel or docetaxel plus or minus ramucirumab. It can have a significant impact on how we take care of our patients once the phase 3 trial confirms the results of the phase 2 study. This can be quite impactful to introduce a new standard of care, and hopefully be a better option for our patients.

Reference

Reckamp KL, Redman MW, Dragnev KH, et al. Overall survival from a phase II randomized study of ramucirumab plus pembrolizumab versus standard of care for advanced non–small cell lung cancer previously treated with immunotherapy: Lung-MAP nonmatched substudy S1800A. J Clin Oncol. 2022;40(suppl 16):9004. doi:10.1200/JCO.2022.40.16_suppl.9004