By: MITCHEL L. ZOLER, Internal Medicine News Digital Network

AMSTERDAM – Management of advanced non–small cell lung cancer now demands molecular profiling and personalized treatment. This new era has just begun, but it will quickly transform the field over the next 4 years, Dr. David R. Gandara said in a talk on the state of lung cancer medical oncology.

Increased molecular profiling – Dr. Gandara called for routine molecular profiling for every patient with advanced NSCLC – will mean a “culture change” for the field, and a sharp turn toward “ungrouping” the universe of NSCLC patients into individuals, he told attendees at the World Conference on Lung Cancer, which was sponsored by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer.

Dr. David R. Gandara

“We shouldn’t even talk about non–small cell lung cancer” as though it were a single entity, said Dr. Gandara, professor and director of the thoracic oncology program at the University of California, Davis, Cancer Center in Sacramento.