Lung cancer, molecular target therapies offer years of life

ROME Block the way to cancer in every way. This is the key word across the many studies presented at the 2024 edition of the American Society of Medical Oncology (ASCO) congress, which has just closed its doors in Chicago. But to do this it is necessary to know cancer in its finest details, those written between the folds of DNA cancer, to highlight the presence of those mutations, those DNA typing errors, which cause tumors to develop and grow, but which are also their Achilles’ heel, which can be attacked today with many targeted therapies. The Agostino Gemelli Irccs University Polyclinic Foundation communicated this in a note. This is the case – continues the note – of Egfr and ALK mutations, present in a small percentage of patients with the cancer of the lung (Egfr in less than 10 percent of patients, ALK in approximately 4 percent), but which can make a difference in terms of survival and quality of life. «Today we have many new therapeutic possibilities available for patients with these mutations – explains Giampaolo Tortora, Professor of Oncology at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart and director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center of Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli Irccs -. It is therefore essential to search for these therapeutic targets in the tumor tissue (biopsy or surgical specimen), already at the first diagnosis. The molecular profiling of tumors is something that here at Gemelli we have begun to do systematically because it is a truly fundamental diagnostic sector in oncology. And this is because those subgroups of patients who exhibit these molecular targets now have a range of relevant, selective therapies available and capable of overcoming the resistance mechanisms of the cancer”.