Oliver Illini, Specialist in Internal Medicine and Pulmonology at Wiener Gesundheitsverbund, shared on LinkedIn:
“Relapsed SCLC is finally moving. But how large was the unmet need just before this therapeutic shift?
Published today in Lung Cancer: our multicenter real-world analysis from four high-volume lung cancer sites in Vienna, conducted as part of the prospective LALUCA registry, provides a snapshot of second-line treatment in ES-SCLC in the chemoimmunotherapy era.
Among 203 patients, only 36.9% proceeded to second-line treatment. Median PFS in second line was 4.7 months, median OS 7.1 months, with treatment still dominated by anthracycline-based regimens, topotecan and platinum rechallenge.
These data may now almost look like a historical benchmark – because the field is changing remarkably fast.
DeLLphi-304 established an OS benefit for tarlatamab, and at WCLC 2026 two randomized phase III trials, TAISHAN-302 and ARTEMIS-008, independently demonstrated substantial survival improvements with B7-H3-directed ADCs over topotecan.
Cross-trial comparisons are obviously not appropriate, but the direction is difficult to miss. After decades of limited progress, SCLC is finally becoming a genuinely dynamic therapeutic space.
Our data also highlight an important point: improving second-line therapy only helps patients who remain fit enough to reach it. In our cohort, almost two thirds never received a second line.
The next challenge may therefore be not only which drug to use after progression, but how to get more patients to the next effective treatment.
Congratulations to first author Daniel Moser and many thanks to all colleagues and collaborating teams across the Wiener Gesundheitsverbund.
Title: Second-line therapy in extensive-stage small cell lung cancer: an unmet need highlighted by real-world evidence from the LALUCA registry
Authors: Daniel Moser, Anna Lang-Stöberl, Hannah Fabikan, Julie Krainer-Jacobs, Oliver Illini, Leyla Ay, Nino Müser, Christoph Weinlinger, Vania Mikaela Rodriguez, Georg-Christian Funk, Marie-Kathrin Breyer, Robab Breyer-Kohansal, Arschang Valipour, Maximilian J. Hochmair.
Read the full article.
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DeLLphi-305: Durvalumab + Tarlatamab Improves Survival in First-Line ES-SCLC
