Supplementary file1 (MP4 21169 KB)
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Supplementary file2 (MP4 272492 KB)
Additional Information: A video abstract, and the podcast and transcript can be viewed in the online version of the manuscript. Alternatively, the podcast and the video abstract can be downloaded here: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.23975517.
1 **uning Le: [00:00]
Hello. Thank you for joining us for this podcast entitled EGFR Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors for the Treatment of Metastatic Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Harboring Uncommon EGFR Mutations. My name is **uning Le. I am an Assistant Professor from UT MD Anderson Cancer Center. Today, we have three other experts in the field for this discussion. Dr Daniel Costa, can you please introduce yourself?
2 Daniel Costa: [00:27]
Hello. I am Daniel Costa. I am a Thoracic Medical Oncologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. I am the group leader for our Thoracic Oncology Program and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
3 **uning Le: [00:41]
Dr Eric Nadler, can you please introduce yourself?
4 Eric Nadler: [00:44]
My name is Eric Nadler. I am a Head and Neck and Thoracic Oncologist at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, and I run health informatics for thoracic and head and neck cancers in the US oncology networks. I have a huge database of information from which to cull.
5 **uning Le: [01:04]
All right, Dr John Heymach, can you please introduce yourself?
6 John Heymach: [01:07]
Hi, I am John Heymach. I am a Thoracic Medical Oncologist and I am Chair of the Department of Thoracic and Head and Neck Medical Oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center.
7 **uning Le: [01:15]
All right. For today, first of all, I want to ask Dan to provide some background information on what we really mean by saying uncommon EGFR mutations, and what are uncommon EGFR mutations’ role in lung cancer?
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8 Daniel Costa: [01:34]
Thank you, ** with the emergence of COVID-19, those numbers changed markedly, but they are still not probably where we want them [22].
First and foremost, single genetic testing panels in the metastatic setting really do not exist anymore. So, most patients are being tested for more than one thing at a time, and that has been true for at least 3 years now [22]. And if you look at next-generation sequencing adoption throughout the nation, it went from about 30% in mid-2020 to now—more than 90% of all testing is next-generation sequencing. Now, [there are] lots of challenges with next-generation sequencing because that could be both plasma and tissue, and sometimes both. And of course, in our national community of practicing oncologists, there is a lot of heterogeneity in how people test, and what people test, and which tests they use. Whether or not it is both RNA- and DNA-containing, or whether it's just tissue or plasma [23, 24]. That being said, it is certainly moving in the right direction [25, 26].
But a couple of big points here that deserve mention. The first is, are we testing all the non-squamous, or are squamous actually being tested? And we know we can see EGFR and KRAS and other mutations in squamous histologies and certainly that is happening more and more. The second thing is, turnaround time has pushed a lot of people toward testing plasma-based approaches initially, sometimes in lieu of tissue-based testing, just because of the ease of it, and the turnaround time of some of the plasma-based approaches, and whether that be Guardant® or cobas®; they tend to be quicker than our tissue-based counterparts [27,28,29]. Lastly, there is a lot of geographic heterogeneity in our testing. I work in Texas in a large community practice and almost all of our patients are being tested in non-small cell lung cancer in the advanced setting. But you go to the state to the left or the right of me, and those rates could fall to 70% even today. So, it is a challenging, complicated time, and things like this podcast I hope will help inform and educate [to perform] at least tissue-based testing, and when that is difficult for turnaround time and tissue, you could add plasma to that easily; [it] should be done in all patients with non-small cell lung cancer [30]. And like I said, over the past 3 years, our numbers have more than doubled but they are still not where any of us would consider optimal.
Now, one other challenge that is worth mentioning is tumors sometimes have more than one mutation occurring in the same gene. We call these compound mutations. As an example, and this was actually early work from Dan Costa that I think really highlighted some of this: tumors will often have a mutation in, for example, the G719 and a 709 mutation or a 758 mutation at the same time. So, there are pairs of mutations that commonly occur together, and there is not an easy way to predict what the sensitivity is going to be other than to test those directly. So, there I think we are going to need to just have a large retrospective database to get clues, use the preclinical modeling, and then test them prospectively in the same type of clinical trials that we mentioned before. You know, in some recent meta-analyses, outcomes in patients who had EGFR inhibitors were generally better among patients with compound mutations if they had a classical mutation like a deletion 19, or an L858R with the second mutation, as compared with when there were two rare independent compound mutations [22]. So, if you have got a classical mutation as part of the compound mutation, it is more likely to be sensitive, is what the data are suggesting. And there are data supporting that those compound mutations, if they have a classical mutation as part of it, that are often sensitive to erlotinib, gefitinib, so first-generation drugs, or afatinib [36]. But if they have got two uncommon mutations, afatinib seems to perform better [36]. There are also some data saying that osimertinib is effective against certain compound mutations [22]. In one study, and it was just with four patients, there was a response rate of 75%, among those four patients, to osimertinib if they had a compound mutation that did not include deletion 19 or L858R [13] (Table 1).
In the recent Unicorn study, there was an encouraging response rate and progression-free survival in patients with some uncommon mutations [15]; so, in patients who had an uncommon mutation plus an L858R, or exon 19 deletion, or T790M, the response rate was 61% and the median progression-free survival was 30 months [15]. And in a much larger retrospective database with over 8000 patients with next-generation sequencing data, among patients who received osimertinib, there were eight patients who had a T854A mutation plus an L858R classical mutation [37]. And there the response rate was 80% and median progression-free survival was 10 months [37]. So, in summary, the real-world data can help support treatment decisions for some mutations, but we just do not have enough data from enough different mutations to make firm decisions for every mutation that comes along. A major unmet need is to develop more data with more different drugs so that we can best start matching drugs with mutations.