Dr. Balazs Halmos on Using Major Lung Cancer Updates to Inform Community Practice

Balazs Halmos, MD, of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center, discusses critical lung cancer updates from the 2024 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting and how The Oncology Brothers Advancements in Oncology event helped unpack the data for community oncologists.

“There’s just so much data that we’ve seen the last couple of days,” he said. “I think it just underlines the importance of events such as The Oncology Brothers live event, where this information can be digested, processed, and you can figure out how to utilize the data for your community practice when you go home.”

The Oncology Brothers, Rahul Gosain, MD, MBA, and Rohit Gosain, MD, sat down with panelist Rami Manochakian, MD, FASCO, of the Mayo Clinic, Florida, on Saturday, June 1 to discuss the most significant lung cancer research presented at this year’s meeting.

Dr. Halmos weighed in on the noteworthy studies that were presented and discussed, including CROWN, PALOMA-3, LAURA, and ADRIATIC.

The plenary presentation on ADRIATIC showed that using durvalumab as a consolidation treatment after concurrent platinum-based chemoradiotherapy demonstrated “a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement” in overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) compared with placebo in patients with limited-stage small cell lung cancer (SCLC).

“The most transformational presentation from this [meeting] was the ADRIATIC study.…We’ve known about the benefit of immunotherapy for extensive-stage [SCLC], but that benefit appeared very modest, so we didn’t really know what to expect from ADRIATIC,” he said. “I have to say that the ADRIATIC study results are a lot more impressive than I personally expected, with a significant PFS and, already, an [OS] benefit.”

Dr. Halmos explained that the ADRIATIC regimen demonstrated a “major impact without any unexpected toxicities,” and it is “transforming our standard of care.”

“When I go back to my clinic tomorrow morning, I have to think about offering that to our patients,” he said.

Dr. Halmos also highlighted the LAURA study that was presented during the plenary session. The phase 3 trial showed osimertinib following definitive chemoradiotherapy demonstrated an improvement in PFS for patients with unresectable stage III EGFR-mutated non-small cell lung cancer. The study results represent “incredible progress for our field,” Dr. Halmos said.

“Now, finally, we can use osimertinib across the entire spectrum, from stage IB to metastatic disease with great success,” Dr. Halmos said.

Overall, the plenary session during the annual meeting “brought a lot to our lung cancer community,” he said.