Lung cancer moving from terminal to chronic disease

With the introduction of new technology and new medicines, what is now terminal lung cancer is expected to become a chronic disease as more patients survive over five years, medical experts told a health conference on the latest therapy and achievements on terminal lung cancer in Shanghai on Tuesday.

According to the World Health Organization, a disease can be called a chronic disease if its median survival time is over five years, which means at least half of the patients survive for over five years.

At the recent 2024 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting, a worldwide multiple-centered research paper reported that the third generation of anaplastic lymphoma kinase inhibitors allowed 60 percent of terminal patients using ALK inhibitors survived for five years without progression of the cancer or death.

The inhibitors block the activity of the ALK protein, which helps control cell growth and may help keep cancer cells from growing and spreading.

"The detection of new targets such as ALK and EGFR and development of medicines based on precise genetic testing and precise treatment are helping change lung cancer from a deadly disease to a chronic disease," said Dr Zhou Caicun, director of Shanghai East Hospital's oncology department.

"It is a very encouraging result. Apart from surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, novel therapy such as gene-targeted medicine and immunotherapy are greatly boosting the development of lung cancer treatment. The individualized treatment, regular diagnoses and treatment and long-term management are all important to patients' long-time survival and better life quality," he said.

Lung cancer is the cancer with the highest mortality in the world. It is also the cancer with the highest incidence and mortality rate in China, which reported about 1.06 million new cases and 740,000 deaths in 2022. The five-year survival of lung cancer patients in China has been only 19.7 percent.

"So the development and promotion of new medications for terminal lung cancer patients are extremely important to help improve their survival and help achieve China's goal of having 46.6 percent of cancer patients survive over five years in 2030," said Han Baohui from the Shanghai Chest Hospital.