Letter from the Editor

Dear Reader,

Please take the time to go through our Congress Report with highlights from this year’s IASLC World Congress of Lung Cancer, which took place from 7-9 September in Barcelona. You will see rapid growing evidence consolidating immunotherapy as the standard for most patients with Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer – and now also with Small-Cell Lung Cancer, the first good news in decades for the latter.

There’s news in early detection and treatment tailoring, with biomarkers increasingly identified (even though the various forms of PD-L1 scoring remain today the essential ones). Patterns of resistance may be countered with targeting agents - and, who knows, in the future lung cancer patients might be efficiently treated with CAR-T cell therapy.

Our confidence in treating with checkpoint inhibitors rises as long-term overall survival data are ever more encouraging – and old age cannot be considered a negative predictive factor, neither concerning treatment outcomes nor toxicity.
Besides that, there are new and exciting oncogene targeting agents on the block, and…
Well, why shouldn’t I just let you go through our report and get your own impressions. I’ll stop right here and wish you a great lecture

Yours, cordially
Stefan Rauh

Biography

Dr Stefan Rauh is currently working as haemato-oncologist in the oncology department of Centre Hospitalier Emile Mayrisch, Esch, Luxembourg. He is mainly involved in clinical work but also in research and teaching activities and is interested in public policy and international cooperation projects in oncology. He is member of the ESMO Practicing Oncologist’s Working Group since 2011 (chair 2014-2018), member of the ESMO Public Policy Committee, and has been an ESMO Executive Board member in 2015-2016. He is co-author of the 2017 ESMO European Cancer Patient Coalition (ECPC) Patient Survivorship Guide and an invited expert for the ECPC.



Posted on 8 November 20195 August 2021