Lung-MAP Trial Opens Enrollment to Patients With All Types of NSCLC

Thousands of new patients are now able to enroll in Lung Cancer Master Cancer Protocol (Lung-MAP), a National Cancer Institute (NCI) trial. Criteria have been expanded to allow patients with all types of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

The trial previously tested treatments for people with advanced-stage squa­mous cell lung cancer. NSCLC is the most common type of lung cancer; com­bined with small cell lung cancer, it affects more than 200,000 people in the United States each year.

“The Lung-MAP trial has already proven its value by successfully complet­ing trials with new targeted agents in selected, molecularly defined subsets of squamous cell lung cancer,” Meg Mooney, M.D., acting associate director of the NCI’s Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program, said in a press release. “This amend­ment to the trial will allow patients with all types of non-small cell lung cancer to potentially benefit. Checkpoint inhibitors have produced a major advance in this refractory cancer, and Lung-MAP now intends to build on the success of these immunotherapy agents by adding new agents to further increase the effective­ness of this approach.”

Other key changes of the trial: a new screening protocol to include the addi­tion of liquid biopsies and a streamlined informed consent form; two new drug substudies, one testing a PARP inhibitor and another testing a PD-L1 and VEGF inhibitor combination; and a new mandate that requires hospitals, clinics and other sites that open the trial to use the NCI’s Central Institutional Review Board to oversee trial changes.