Search

Simple Summary: The prognosis of metastatic lung cancer has been largely modified with targeted therapies and immunotherapies. Whether this survival benefit for subgroups of patients is beneficial to all patients treated for lung cancer has never been explored. The Institut Curie is an anti-cancer center in Paris, France, treating patients with lung cancer. Since the 2000s, Institut Curie has implemented dematerialized medical records, allowing for a large overview of the survival of patients with lung cancer according to treatment evolution. We found that the survival of patients with metastatic lung cancer has improved over the past 20 years, mostly in NSCLC (non-small cell lung cancer) but not in SCLC (small cell lung cancer). SCLC remains a disease with poor prognosis for which novel therapies are needed. Over the past 20 years, several innovative therapies have been implemented in the treatment of lung cancer that have had reported survival benefits in clinical trials. Whether these improvements translate into the clinic setting has not been studied yet. We retrospectively analyzed all patients consecutively treated at Institute Curie for metastatic lung cancer. Diagnosis date was used to define three periods, based on the approvals of novel treatment strategies in the first-line setting, including targeted therapies in 2010 and immunotherapy in 2018. Endpoints included Overall survival (OS), survival rate of 2 years and 5 years, and a conditional survival rate of 2 years (if still alive at 6 months from treatment initiation). A total of 673 patients were identified for Period 1—2000 to 2009, 752 for Period 2—2010 to 2017, and 768 for Period 3—2018 to 2020. Median OS in the whole cohort was 11.1, 15.5, and 16.2 months, respectively. Median OS for patients with NSCLC or SCLC was 11.2, 17.2, and 18.2 months, or 10.9, 11.7, and 11.2 months, respectively. The two-year conditional survival was more favorable for NSCLC than SCLC patients. Outcomes were statistically higher for women as compared to men in all periods and all subgroups. Survival of patients with metastatic lung cancer has improved over the past 20 years, mostly in NSCLC, along with the implementation of novel treatment strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High‐throughput molecular profiling of solid tumours using core needle biopsies (CNB) allows the identification of actionable molecular alterations, with around 70% success rate. Although several studies have demonstrated the utility of small biopsy specimens for molecular testing, there remains debate as to the sensitivity of the less invasive fine‐needle aspiration (FNA) compared to CNB to detect molecular alterations. We aimed to prospectively evaluate the potential of FNA to detect such alterations in various tumour types as compared to CNB in cancer patients included in the SHIVA02 trial. An in‐house amplicon‐based targeted sequencing panel (Illumina TSCA 99.3 kb panel covering 87 genes) was used to identify pathogenic variants and gene copy number variations (CNV) in concomitant CNB and FNA samples obtained from 61 patients enrolled in the SHIVA02 trial (NCT03084757). The main tumour types analysed were breast (38%), colon (15%), pancreas (11%), followed by cervix and stomach (7% each). We report 123 molecular alterations (85 variants, 23 amplifications and 15 homozygous deletions) among which 98 (80%) were concordant between CNB and FNA. The remaining discordances were mainly related to deletions status, yet undetected alterations were not exclusively specific to FNA. Comparative analysis of molecular alterations in CNB and FNA showed high concordance in terms of variants as well as CNVs identified. We conclude FNA could therefore be used in routine diagnostics workflow and clinical trials for tumour molecular profiling with the advantages of being minimally invasive and preserve tissue material needed for diagnostic, prognostic or theranostic purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]