SAN DIEGO, Sept. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Combining radiation therapy with chemotherapy for patients with limited metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) may curb disease progression dramatically when compared to NSCLC patients who only receive chemotherapy, according to a new randomized phase II clinical trial reported today at the 59th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). Progression-free survival in the trial escalated from 3.5 months to 9.7 months with the addition of radiation therapy delivered to all the metastatic sites of lung cancer as well as the primary disease site. Treatment-related side effects were similar for the two treatment approaches.

Lung cancer claims the most cancer-specific deaths of any tumor type. Few existing treatments offer durable survival benefits for patients whose NSCLC has spread past the lungs, due in part to the aggressive nature of lung cancer and its propensity to progress, even following treatment. Research on metastatic colorectal cancer and sarcoma, however, suggests a potential benefit from adding local therapy—treatment directed specifically at the tumor cells—to the standard approach of systemic therapy. In these studies, adding radiation or/and surgery bolstered the ability of systemic therapies, such as chemotherapy, to control disease and improve survival in patients with few metastases.

"Even in the era of immunotherapy, there are not large numbers of metastatic NSCLC patients with durable responses to systemic therapy. In our trial, however, the addition of radiation therapy directed at each of the cancerous areas greatly improved how patients responded to subsequent rounds of chemotherapy," said Puneeth Iyengar, MD, PhD, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of radiation oncology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. "This finding suggests that local treatments, including radiation, could work in concert with chemotherapy to prolong the amount of time before recurrence occurs in patients with limited sites of metastatic NSCLC."
The study was a randomized phase II trial testing whether the addition of local treatment, in the form of consolidative radiation therapy, to the standard treatment of systemic therapy improved progression-free survival for patients with limited metastatic NSCLC. Eligible patients included those with stage IV disease, spread to six or fewer sites including the primary tumor site, and who responded at least partially to first-line/induction chemotherapy.

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