Dr. Alexis Chidi discusses lung cancer in non-smokers and how MSK uses targeted therapies and clinical trials to treat it.
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Although we do know that smoking is a risk factor for lung cancer, there are many other things that can cause lung cancer.
We know that anyone with lungs can get lung cancer, unfortunately. We're noticing that there are more and more young women who have never smoked who are getting lung cancer. Several of these patients are diagnosed with something called EGFR, which is a mutation that can promote the growth and progression of lung cancer. The great thing is that in this day and age, we have more and more therapies that can target that specific mutation and can actually dramatically improve the care for these patients.
It's something that we here at MSK are doing a great job of treating both in the clinical world and also thinking about from a clinical trial perspective. So people who come here have an incredible array of clinical trials available to them, especially if they're in that group of people who are younger and have never smoked.