Advancements in Treatment Strategies for Stage IV NSCLC

Dr. Jyoti Patel is back on the podcast to discuss the updates to the living guideline on therapy for stage IV NSCLC with driver alterations. She shares updated recommendations in the first- and second-line settings for patients with stage IV NSCLC and classical EGFR mutations, and the impact of these updates for clinicians and patients. We also look to the future to discuss ongoing developments in the field. Read the full living guideline update “Therapy for Stage IV Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer With Driver Alterations: ASCO Living Guideline, Version 2024.3” at www.asco.org/living-guidelines.

TRANSCRIPT

This guideline, clinical tools, and resources are available at http://www.asco.org/living-guidelines. Read the full text of the guideline and review authors’ disclosures of potential conflicts of interest in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO-24-02785  

Brittany Harvey: Welcome to the ASCO Guidelines Podcast, one of ASCO's podcasts delivering timely information to keep you up to date on the latest changes, challenges and advances in oncology. You can find all the shows including this one at asco.org/podcasts.  

My name is Brittany Harvey and today I'm interviewing Dr. Jyoti Patel from Northwestern University, co-chair on “Therapy for Stage IV Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer With Driver Alterations: ASCO Living Guideline, Version 2024.3.”

It's great to have you back on the show today, Dr. Patel.

Dr. Jyoti Patel: Thanks so much. Happy to be here.

Brittany Harvey: And then before we discuss this guideline, I'd like to note that ASCO takes great care in the development of its guidelines and ensuring that the ASCO Conflict of Interest Policy is followed for each guideline. The disclosures of potential conflicts of interest for the guideline panel, including Dr. Patel, who has joined us here today, are available online with the publication of the guideline and in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, which is linked in the show notes.

So then, to dive into the content of this update, Dr. Patel, this clinical practice guideline for systemic therapy for patients with stage IV non small cell lung cancer with driver alterations is living, meaning that it's continuously reviewed and updated. So what data prompted this latest change to the recommendations?

Dr. Jyoti Patel: Thanks so much. So it's really been an exciting time in the treatment of EGFR lung cancer, particularly this past year has required us to rethink approaches to front- and second-line therapy. In this particular update, we examined what patients in the front-line setting may be offered by their clinicians. And so we're talking about the population of classical EGFR mutations, so exon 19 and exon 21 L858R substitution. And so certainly for this population, osimertinib has a high level of evidence and should be offered to all patients at the time of diagnosis when they present with advanced disease. Our last update included a recommendation that patients could also get platinum doublet chemotherapy with osimertinib or osimertinib alone. This current recommendation also introduces another alternative therapy and that's the combination of amivantamab plus lazertinib. And so now, clinicians are faced with three really good options for their patients with EGFR exon19 deletion or L858R.

Brittany Harvey: It's great to hear that there's this advance in the space, particularly for patients with these classical EGFR mutations that you mentioned.

So what should clinicians know as they implement these new first-line recommendations?

Dr. Jyoti Patel:  I think it's become more complex than ever. Certainly, we know again that patients should get osimertinib in the frontline setting. But we've been kind of stuck at progression-free survival that's between a year and a half and two years. And so we've really been looking at opportunities to intensify therapy. So one could certainly be with chemotherapy or switching over to amivantamab, the bispecific antibody that targets EGFR and MET plus lazertinib, an oral TKI that's very similar in structure to osimertinib. And when you're talking to a patient, it's really a conversation about balancing efficacy with toxicity. Unfortunately, as we know, there aren't that many free lunches. And so if we think about what a patient is hoping for in their therapy and how we can further personalize treatment options, really is important to look at some of the analyses for this study.

So in the study of amivantamab plus lazertinib, we know that there were increased toxicities with a combination of both therapies. In fact, up to 75% of patients had over grade 3 toxicities, versus about 43% of patients with osimertinib monotherapy. And we know if we look back at FLAURA2, almost two thirds of patients with osimertinib and chemotherapy had grade 3 toxicities, compared to 27% of patients with osimertinib alone. So we certainly see an increase in toxicities. Then we have to ask ourselves, are those paper toxicities or ones that really impact patients? And we know that amivantamab, for example, causes significant cutaneous toxicities. With both of these therapies, whether it's chemotherapy or adding amivantamab, there's the burden of infusional visits and increased time in the doctor's office. Certainly with chemotherapy, there can be an increased incidence of myelosuppression. And so when we're thinking about advising our patients, certainly we need to talk about the toxicities.

But one thing that we've been able to do is to look at the patients that were included in this trial. And what we really find is that in higher risk cohorts, particularly those that we know historically have done less well with standard osimertinib, so patients, for example, with CNS metastasis, for those patients with co-mutations, it may be that that additive benefit is significant. And so one example I think would be from the MARIPOSA study, again, the study of amivantamab and lazertinib versus chemotherapy. What we can say is that patients who had co-mutations, so patients with EGFR mutations as well as TP53, lazertinib and amivantamab led to a hazard ratio of 0.65 compared to osimertinib alone. So that was 18.2 months versus 12.9 months. And so this may be really important to patients. And we also see conversely that patients with wild type TP53, so those patients who didn't have the mutation, probably had equivalent survival regardless of therapy.

So certainly, we need to prospectively study some of these high-risk cohorts. We've only seen progression-free survival in these studies. And so at this juncture, we can advise our patients about toxicity, the improvements in certain categories of progression-free survival, but we really still don't know how this pans out in overall survival. In many of these studies, all patients do not necessarily cross over to the study arm and so they may have lost the benefit of subsequent therapy.

Brittany Harvey: Absolutely. It's very important to talk about that balance of benefits and risks and particularly those toxicities that you discussed.

So I appreciate reviewing that recommendation and the considerations for clinicians for first-line therapy. This update also included a second-line treatment update. What is that update for patients with EGFR alterations?

Dr. Jyoti Patel: So this is where it gets super tricky because we have a frontline option with amivantamab and now we've had an update in the second line option. So what we said is that for patients who have progressed on an EGFR TKI, and in the United States, certainly that's predominantly osimertinib, or those in other parts of the world that may have gotten an earlier generation TKI, but do not have evidence of T790M or other targetable mutations, we can offer patients chemotherapy with or without amivantamab. And so certainly we have seen that this again leads to improved survival.

There have also been a number of studies looking at incorporation of PD-L1 and anti-VEGF therapies. And what we can say, I think pretty clearly is that multiple phase 3 trials have really shown no benefit of the addition of PD-1 to platinum chemotherapy. But there are some emerging bispecific antibodies that may target PD-1 as well as VEGF, or combinations of antibodies that target both of those pathways that may improve outcome. At this juncture, I think we feel that the evidence surrounding chemotherapy plus amivantamab is strongest, but there is certainly work in this space that will be of interest.

Now, what happens if your patient received amivantamab and lazertinib in the frontline setting and then has progression? And so we're trying to understand resistance mechanisms and opportunities for treatment. What the panel decided to recommend, based on the available evidence, was that certainly those patients should get platinum-based chemotherapy, but there may also be a role for antivascular endothelial growth factor targeting therapy such as bevacizumab in patients in whom it would be safe.

Brittany Harvey: Great. I appreciate you detailing those recommendations when it gets complicated in the second-line setting.

So what should clinicians know as they implement these second-line recommendations too?

Dr. Jyoti Patel: So certainly the frontline setting matters significantly. So if a patient gets osimertinib in the frontline setting, we generally suggest that patients undergo repeat testing to see if they have another targetable mutation. If they don't, then I think preferred therapy would be chemotherapy with or without amivantamab. And amivantamab leads to a significant improvement in progression-free survival and response rate at the cost of increased risk of toxicity. For patients who get FLAURA2 in the frontline setting, chemotherapy plus osimertinib, it's a little bit of an unclear space. Those patients most likely would get docetaxel with or without ramucirumab. But there are other agents that we hope to have available to our patients in the near future.

For patients who receive amivantamab and osimertinib, we recommend that those patients get chemotherapy probably with anti-VEGF as demonstrated by multiple trials that have shown the improved progression-free survival with introduction of an anti-VEGF agent. And we've seen evidence of amivantamab in the third line setting, so it is likely that this question about sequencing really takes center stage in our next set of trials. When you're talking to a patient, I think again, it's absolutely important to discuss: What are their goals? How symptomatic or how fast is their progression? Are there ways in which patients may benefit from spot treatment oligoprogression such as radiation? When is the right time for introduction of amivantamab and when do we think patients need chemotherapy? Is it up front or predominantly in the second-line setting?

Brittany Harvey: Definitely. And then you've just touched on the goals of treatment for individual patients. So in your view, what does this update mean for patients with stage IV non-small cell lung cancer and an EGFR alteration?

Dr. Jyoti Patel: For patients, this is a time in which shared decision making really needs to take center stage. So our best patients are those patients that are best informed not only about their disease but also have a good understanding about what is important to them and their families in terms of care. And so bringing that shared understanding to the table again helps us think about this particular cancer as more of a journey rather than just a one off treatment. Therapy will hopefully be prolonged, and so it's absolutely important that we address toxicities, make therapies more tolerable, again, with the shared goal of living long and living well.

Brittany Harvey: Absolutely. Those are key points to making sure that patients are living both longer and have a good quality of life during that time as well.

So then, before you mentioned the possibility of future sequencing trials and other ongoing developments. What additional studies or future directions is the panel examining for future updates to this living guideline?

Dr. Jyoti Patel: So certainly we're thinking about trials that look at, for example, cfDNA clearance. So are there patients that do well and can we detect that early on without having to intensify therapy on day 1 so it may be that we add chemotherapy a little bit later. I think really exciting are some of the new bispecific. The HARMONi-A trial was a trial in China of a novel bispecific, ivonescimab. And this drug targets both PD-1 and VEGF and it was combined with chemotherapy. And this trial found almost a doubling of progression-free survival with this drug in combination chemotherapy in an EGFR patient population. That study is being planned and being run in the United States to see if we have similar outcomes with a more diverse population. So certainly that's exciting.

There are a number of antibody drug conjugates that are being studied in the post-chemotherapy setting as well. And I think we'll likely soon see a better understanding of what co-mutations and burden of disease really mean when we're thinking about assigning treatment. So which patients, again, need intensification of therapy and which patients may do really well on just an oral agent that they're taking at home with more tolerable toxicity than dual treatment.

Brittany Harvey: Yes, we'll look forward to continued developments in these fields and seeing some of those studies come to fruition.

So with that, I want to thank you for your work to rapidly and continuously update this guideline, and thank you for your time today, Dr. Patel.

Dr. Jyoti Patel: Thanks so much, Brittany. It's really an exciting time for lung cancer and we hope that these updates really help physicians decide the best treatments for their patients. Again, it's a rapidly evolving landscape which is fantastic, but it does become more cumbersome to stay ahead of the literature.

Brittany Harvey: Definitely. And so we appreciate your time and the panel's time spent reviewing this literature and providing this much needed information to clinicians everywhere.

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