Kishen Patel, Clinical Research Fellow at University College London, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“I had a fantastic time at the BTOG Non-Smoking Lung Cancer Essential Update with the Ruth Strauss Foundation.
My key takeaways were that non-smoking lung cancer is rising and is already the fifth leading cause of cancer death worldwide. It is significantly more common in women and in people of East Asian background. It tends to occur at a younger age and, unlike smoking-related lung cancer, is less strongly linked to socio-economic status.
Patients are more likely to have a low mutational burden and to carry an actionable driver alteration such as EGFR. This underlines the importance of timely genomic sequencing so that targeted treatment can begin without delay, and reinforces that smoking-related and non-smoking lung cancers may require distinct therapeutic approaches.
Overall, the biological and clinical differences between smoking and non-smoking lung cancer highlight the importance of truly personalised cancer care in the lung cancer population.”
More posts about Lung Cancer.