Lung Cancer

(Recasts first paragraph, adds background, updates stock price) By Michael Erman NEW YORK, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co said on Thursday it pulled an application seeking U.S. approval for a combination of its drugs to treat lung cancer, even as it announced better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings on strong sales of one of those medicines, the immunotherapy Opdivo. The drugmaker, which announced a planned $74 billion acquisition of biotech Celgene Corp earlier this month, said it withdrew the U.S. application for the combination of Opdivo and its older immunotherapy Yervoy as an initial, or first-line, treatment for advanced lung cancer. Bristol said it needs to collect more data on the benefits of the combination to patients whose cancer cells have a biomarker called tumor mutational burden (TMB) above a certain level. It made the decision after discussions with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The company’s shares were flat at $49.96 midday trading. Analy...

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) — The Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute (ALCMI) announced this week that it has partnered with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute on a nationwide study investigating the causes of treatment resistance in a subset of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. The study — called Study of Plasma Next Generation Sequencing for Remote Assessment, Characterization, Evaluation of Patients with ALK Drug Resistance, or SPACEWALK — will focus on anaplastic lymphoma kinase-positive NSCLC patients, who benefit from approved ALK inhibitors but often develop resistance mutations. According to ALCMI, the study will enroll NSCLC patients who have already developed resistance to ALK-targeted therapy. Participants will provide a blood sample that will be sent to Bellevue, Washington-based Resolution Bioscience, which will sequence circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in order to identify genetic changes that contribute to drug resistance and may be used to guide treatment decisions....

Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) has run into yet another hurdle as it tries to break into the lucrative first-line lung cancer market dominated by rival Merck & Co. In its fourth quarter release, BMS revealed that it has been forced to withdraw a marketing application in the US for its immuno- oncology pairing of PD-1 inhibitor Opdivo (nivolumab) and CTLA4 inhibitor Yervoy (ipilimumab) in front-line non-small cell lung cancer patients with high tumour mutational burden (TMB) after a request from the FDA for more data. The company says the US regulator wants more information about the relationship between TMB, PD-L1 expression and overall survival (OS) in these patients in a first-line setting – and that means waiting for final data from BMS’ phase III Checkmate-227 trial , expected to be ready in the next few months. There’s no chance of delaying the marketing application until the readout, however, so BMS has pulled the marketing application and will re-file later. The big unansw...

She is one of the 12,741 Australians diagnosed with lung cancer in Australia annually, which remains the nation’s leading cause of cancer death even though it is only the fifth most commonly diagnosed cancer. Sadly, there are 268,200 people currently living with lung cancer and 9,198 people are expected to die from it this year alone. http://bit.ly/2S7ixNR

Nicholas Jarrett, an operations manager with Greenville Radon Specialist says, “Over an extended period of time, the exposure levels can possibly cause lung cancer. So, the more radon that there is over a longer period of time, the higher the risk is for gaining lung cancer from that. We recommend that everyone has their home tested and if you do have elevated levels then there’s nothing you can do about the past, but we do recommend that you get it mitigated below the EPA Action Level, which is 4.0 pCi/L.” http://bit.ly/2Hxfaf3

Dave and Sue Tibbetts are pictured here. The couple, who lives in Gilbert, has battled health issues; Sue had a lung transplant in 2014, while Dave was recently diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. Photo courtesy of Farmers Independent. In 1966 Dave Tibbetts graduated from Bagley (MN) High School. His next chapters included war in Vietnam, marriage to Susie, kids and a career on the Iron Range. After raising his family and seeing them all start their adult lives, he and Susie decided to return in 2007 to live in the area around Lake Itasca. While at Itasca Township, Dave worked here and there while still collecting his pension from the Inland Steel mill, which he helped to build as a carpenter and foreman with Bechtel Corp. Immediately after the mill was complete he went to work as a millwright, carpenter, production truck driver and other jobs for Inland Steel, which later was sold to Arcelor Mittal. When they moved from their home in Aurora to Itasca, Susie was suffering from a l...