Johan Vansteenkiste, MD, PhD of University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium talks about how patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the lung do worse than those with adenocarcinoma of the lung. Squamous cell carcinoma patients have smoking-induced cancers, meaning they have comorbidities including lung disease, heart disease, renal disease, diabetes, in addition to being older. This creates a different patient with limitations for surgery, limitations for systemic treatments such as chemotherapy, and further, no targeted agents are available. Recently some developments have been seen for these patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) antibodies and immunotherapy. Recorded at the 2016 World Conference of Lung Cancer (WCLC) of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) in Vienna, Austria.
The difficulties in treating squamous cell lung cancer
