Current and Emergent Therapy Options for Advanced Squamous Cell Lung Cancer

Socinski, Mark A., Obasaju, Coleman, Gandara, David, Hirsch, Fred R., Bonomi, Philip, Bunn, Paul A., Jr., Kim, Edward S., Langer, Corey J., Natale, Ronald B., Novello, Silvia, Paz-Ares, Luis, Perol, Maurice, Reck, Martin, Ramalingam, Suresh S., Reynolds, Craig H., Spigel, David R., Wakelee, Heather, Thatcher, Nick

The concepts addressed in this article, were originally discussed at a meeting convened by Eli Lilly and Company that discussed topics for physician education on squamous cell lung cancer, for which participants, including some of the authors on this publication, received an honorarium. The authors received no payment in relation to the development of this publication, Which was developed separately from the meeting. Medical writing assistance was funded by Lilly. The authors would like to thank Gail Rickard, PhD, at Complete HealthVizion for assistance with writing and revising the draft manuscript on the basis of detailed feedback from all authors. Primary responsibility for opinions, conclusions, and interpretation of data lies with the authors, and all authors approved the final version of the manuscript.

Squamous cell lung cancer (SqCLC) is a distinct histologic subtype of NSCLC that is challenging to treat because of specific clinicopathologic characteristics, which include older age, advanced disease at diagnosis, comorbid diseases, and the central location of tumors. These characteristics have a bearing on treatment outcomes in advanced SqCLC, resulting in a median survival approximately 30% shorter than for patients with other NSCLC subtypes. In the context of the specific features of SqCLC, we review challenges of treating SqCLC and the current guideline-recommended treatments for advanced (metastatic) SqCLC in different patient subpopulations. We also evaluate recently approved treatment options, including necitumumab, afatinib, nivolumab, pembrolizumab, and atezolizumab; discuss the survival benefits associated with each agent in the advanced SqCLC population; and propose a treatment algorithm incorpdrating these agents for this challenging-to-treat disease. Lastly, we review the preliminary clinical evidence for immunotherapy agents in development for advanced NSCLC. (C) 2018 International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Current and Emergent Therapy Options for Advanced Squamous Cell Lung Cancer Review