The National Comprehensive Cancer Network has already made five changes to its 2017 guidelines on treating non-small cell lung cancer, reports Medscape.
The most important change in the use of biomarkers is that all lung cancer patients should now be tested for programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1), said another presenter, Gregory J. Riely, MD, PhD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
“If you are meeting with a new lung cancer patient, you have to do this test to do the right thing,” Dr Riely told Medscape Medical News.
The guidance was issued by the NCCN at the end of 2016, observed Dr Riely. That was soon after the annual meeting of the European Society of Medical Oncology, where results were presented from the landmark trial that established pembrolizumab (Keytruda, Merck) as superior to standard chemotherapy in the first-line treatment of a specific group of patients with advanced NSCLC, as reported by Medscape Medical News.
Read more at www.medscape.com
