Young Kwang Chae, Professor and Co-Director of Developmental Therapeutics, Lurie Cancer Center at Northwestern University, shared a post on X:
“I am happy to share our first comprehensive report of the DREAM study outcome just published in the journal JAMA!
Historically, lung transplantation has not been offered to patients with advanced lung cancer due to concerns over poor oncological outcomes. Our prospective registry study challenges this paradigm for a highly selected group of patients.
I am incredibly grateful for the entire DREAM team, including Ankit Bharat, who worked tirelessly to care for this challenging group of patients while pushing the frontline of medicine forward. Here are the key takeaways from our newly published research:
The Study Design
Participants: We evaluated 98 adults with medically refractory, ‘lung-limited’, stage IV non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) experiencing respiratory failure.
The Cohorts: 17 patients underwent lung transplantation using a dissemination-minimizing technique, while 81 eligible patients received standard medical management alone due to nonbiologic barriers. We also compared outcomes against 306 adults without cancer who underwent lung transplants.
Promising Survival Outcomes
100% vs 40.8%: The estimated 1-year overall survival was 100% in the lung transplant group compared to just 40.8% for those who received medical management alone, a striking absolute difference of 59.2 percentage points!
Excellent Post-Transplant Success: The 1-year posttransplant survival for stage IV NSCLC patients (100%) was highly favorable, even when compared to transplant recipients without cancer (88.1%).
What This Means
For carefully selected patients with medically refractory, lung-limited, stage IV NSCLC, lung transplantation can offer exceptionally favorable early survival compared to traditional medical management alone. While longer-term follow-up and quality-of-life assessments are still needed, these findings open a crucial new door for advanced lung cancer care.”
Title: Lung Transplant for Refractory Lung-Limited Stage IV Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer
Authors: Ankit Bharat, Chitaru Kurihara, Liam IL-Young Chung, Ruli Gao, Samuel Kim, Kalvin Lung, Catherine Myers, Mrinalini Venkata Subramani, Momen Wahidi, Mohamed E. Abazeed, Brooke Sanson, Ronald Min, Tarik Demir, Sang Hwa Kim, Chan Mi Jung, Yuchan Kim, Ambalavanan Arunachalam, Masha Kocherginsky, G. R. Scott Budinger, Young Kwang Chae
Read the Full Article.
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WHO Global Cancer Report 2026: Lung Cancer Shows Why Prevention Still Saves the Most Lives
