Abstracts by keywords: Precision medicine
Lung cancer is one of the most common tumor diseases and the most common cause of cancer death in Germany.1,2 Only about 1/3 of non-small cell lung carcinomas (NSCLC), which is present in 80% of all lung cancer cases, is operable when initially diagnosed.3 For patients with advanced or In NSCLC that cannot be treated curatively, only marginal improvements in response and survival have been achieved over decades with systemic therapy, usually with chemotherapy. With the discovery that the growth of some tumors is driven by an activating mutation of the tyrosine kinase and that these can be specifically inhibited, there have been significant advances in the treatment of lung cancer in the field of precision medicine, also known as personalized medicine, for around ten years .4 This means that around 30% of all NSCLC patients in advanced stages can now be treated in a personalized or targeted manner.4 In randomized studies, patients with NSCLC and mutations in the EGF receptors have higher response rates, longer progression-free survival and lower rates when treated with a TKI Side effects compared to cytotoxic chemotherapy.8 In addition, several treatment cohorts worldwide have shown an improvement in overall survival with personalized medicine for lung cancer.9 The patients recorded in the Cologne Network for Genomic Medicine (NGM) showed lung cancer compared to a historical control group with the relevant driver mutations a significant increase in overall survival of a median of 21.9 months in EGFR-positive and 12 months in ALK-positive NSCLC patients.10