SG patients with advanced NSCLC to benefit from monotherapy drug option

Treatment options for NSCLC patients with EGFR mutation can now be accessed.

Patients in Singapore with locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-activating mutations can now benefit from monotherapy drugs that have shown improvement in progression-free survival and overall survival.

The exon 21 L858R mutation made up 39.3% of total EGFR mutations tested locally between March 2013 to March 2014. Patients with the mutation tend to have a higher tumour mutational burden and shorter overall survival. This is critical for Singapore, where the high disease-attributable mortality of lung cancer makes the condition a public health issue.

"Globally, lung cancer treatment has changed from a histology-based to a target-based approach, as the management of NSCLC patients is becoming increasingly complex," said Icon Cancer Centre Medical Oncology Specialist Daniel Chan. "Since prolongation of survival is a key concern among our patients in Singapore, the addition of monotherapy drug treatments to the current ones is a step forward in the right direction to provide physicians with more options for patients with this disease."

Lung cancer continues to be the leading source of cancer death over the past fifty years. It was the top cause of cancer death among males and the second leading cause of cancer death among females from 2013 to 2017.