(Miami Herald) June 8, 2017 - The first patients in a clinical trial at Roswell Park Cancer Institute have begun receiving monthly doses of CIMAvax-EGF, a Cuban lung cancer vaccine that U.S. researchers say shows promise in preventing the recurrence of lung cancer — the leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States.

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H. Jack West, MD (Posted: June 09, 2017)

CIMA-vax-EGF is the most hype-driven piffle in lung cancer since dichloroacetate. There is staggeringly little evidence to justify the mania around it. It merits study, but it doesn't merit feature stories based on the very marginal data thus far. Everything written about it in the mainstream media is driven by ignorance. True experts in lung cancer roll their eyes over such gullibility and the promotion of so much false hope.

(Medscape Medical News) June 5, 2017 - "Immune checkpoint inhibitors are likely to change our standard of care in malignant pleural mesothelioma," said Anne Tsao, MD, a medical oncologist from MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, who spoke here at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2017 Annual Meeting.

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H. Jack West, MD (Posted: June 07, 2017)

These data with immunotherapy are not definitive, but they certainly represent a promising option and previously treated patients who really have no compelling alternative with any good hint of meaningful benefit. I have one patient with previously treated mesothelioma who have received some benefit from an immune checkpoint inhibitor after she demonstrated progression on prior platinum and pemetrexed chemotherapy, and while she has not demonstrated what would be considered an objective response (mesothelioma is notoriously difficult to assess well on imaging), she has demonstrated ongoing and very prolonged period of stable disease to minor disease shrinkage accompanied by an improvement in her cancer-related symptoms. I certainly do not doubt that she is receiving a very clinically significant benefit from immunotherapy, despite the lack of an objective response. I would not want to put too find a point on the limited data we have available thus far, and especially my single patient experience (I have given an immune checkpoint inhibitor to another 2-3 patients who have not done as well), but I do think that we can and should be encouraged by even limited data showing meaningful clinical activity in a setting in which we have had nothing constructive to offer up to this point.

(PharmaTimes [UK]) June 7, 2017 - AstraZeneca has presented new data showing that Tagrisso also extends progression-free survival for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients who have central nervous system (CNS) metastases.

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H. Jack West, MD (Posted: June 07, 2017)

The results from the phase 3 AURA3 trial that directly compares osimertinib to chemotherapy in EGFR mutation-positive patients with acquired resistance to an earlier EGFR inhibitorVery clearly demonstrate a significant improvement in disease control with in the CNS with osimertinib. In addition to leading to good disease control in patients with brain metastases, there was even documented activity in a small subset of patients who have leptomeningeal carcinomatosis. This is emerging as a very significant consideration as we follow and treat these patients longitudinally, as they have a high risk of CNS involvement.Many of us would welcome the opportunity to have EGFR mutation-positive patients receive osimertinib to treat or prevent CNS disease as soon as we could feasibly have him start on it, including ideally in patients who may not have a T790M mutation. Osimertinib emerge as an appropriate first line treatment option for EGFR mutation-positive patients based on the results of the FLAURA trial comparing it to first line gefitinib or erlotinib -- we expect to learn the results from that study as early as this fall.