Shaping the future of lung cancer care

After caring for his mother who had lung cancer, Mark Brooke, now CEO of Lung Foundation Australia, dedicated himself to supporting patients and their loved ones on their lung cancer journey. 

That representation of the lung cancer community has never been more important. In recent years, significant progress has been made in the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer and, as a result, lung cancer mortality is declining.1

Advances in biomarker testingmean that physicians can identify whether a patient’s cancer has specific characteristics, called biomarkers, which helps them develop more personalised treatment plans.2 To address the high risk of cancer coming back in early-stage disease, new treatment approaches before (neoadjuvant) and after (adjuvant) surgery are being investigated.3

As treatments advance, it’s essential we ensure patient and physician communities are actively included in the journey.

Day by day, scientists are unravelling the complexities of lung cancer to make a difference for patients. “There is a sense of optimism creeping into lung cancer,” says Mark.

However, not all people who are eligible for these innovations are aware about them. Involving people with lung cancer and their families in making treatment decisions is more critical than ever to improving outcomes, as many people don’t fully understand their disease or options.

“I had a lovely chat with a lung cancer patient and their family. I used the term adjuvant and they said, “What’s that Mark? Is that something new? Should I be on that?” I had to apologise - it’s almost natural for us to use language that is hard for people to understand.”

Mark strongly advocates for greater patient empowerment by increasing the amount of reliable information and for physicians and patients to have open conversations to support informed decisions around treatment. “Ideally, I want everybody to be an advocate for their own healthcare.”

Measuring patient outcomes in clinical trials

There continues to be significant advancements made, with ongoing clinical trials exploring the use of targeted therapies and cancer immunotherapies in the adjuvant and neoadjuvant treatment of lung cancer.

Researchers are making significant progress through clinical trials looking at new ways to treat lung cancer, such as targeted therapies and cancer immunotherapies. In many of these trials, physicians use overall survival (OS) as a key measure to see if a treatment is working.

Alternatively, physicians also look at other measures like disease-free survival (DFS). DFS measures the time after treatment without the cancer coming back, which can help provide an early indication of how much a treatment is helping patients.4 Using DFS can give more clarity to people with lung cancer and their families while they wait for the full picture from the OS results.

While DFS is becoming more widely accepted by health authorities and healthcare professionals as a measure of effectiveness for new treatments, there is a need to support patient understanding of this terminology. “I think terms like ‘overall survival’ and ‘disease-free survival’ are confusing and patients don’t always understand what it means” says Mark, “however for me and our patient community endpoints like DFS are really important.”

Though the future shows promise, we must continue to work together. Mark is hopeful that progress will continue to be made in earlier diagnosis, screening and the development of lung cancer medicines.

He draws inspiration from a moment that he has never forgotten: “On the day I started my job, some flowers arrived on my desk. I thought they were from my wife, but they were from one of our lung cancer patients - Carolyn Riordan.A passionate champion of our work in lung cancer and someone who always puts others first, Carolyn sent me the flowers as a symbol of hope for all the patients and families we support. She knew that together we could change the world if we tried.”