While researchers have learned in the last decade that combining chemotherapy with radiation is better than radiation alone for treating non-small cell lung cancer patients with locally advanced disease - cancer confined to the lungs - finding the right combination of drugs - and the best timing of treatment - has been tricky.
A new study led by lung cancer specialists at Jefferson Medical College adds to growing evidence that giving patients both chemotherapy and radiation in the beginning of treatment may help patients live longer. Non-small-cell lung cancer accounts for about 80 percent of all cases of lung cancer. An estimated 40,000 Americans are diagnosed each year with locally advanced disease.
"This is a further step in looking at what is the best combination of two chemotherapy agents with radiation, which will enable us to move forward and study it more systematically," says Walter J. Curran Jr., M.D., professor and chair of radiation oncology at Jefferson Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and clinical director of Jefferson's Kimmel Cancer Center, who led the research.
"There are new biologic agents we want to test with chemotherapy, with radiation and with both," he notes. "Finding the best combination of chemotherapy and radiation provides a template by which we can test these agents."
The results appear in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.