Dr. Nieva Shares Insights From Epidemiology of Young Lung Cancer Trial

Jorge Nieva, MD, of the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, joined Lung Cancers Today to discuss his research on lung cancer in young patients.

“Young people with lung cancer have a very different pattern of genomic alterations from older people,” Dr. Nieva said in an interview during the  IASLC 2024 World Conference on Lung Cancer. “We found that they have an extremely high rate of actionable mutations, and we also found that they’re very commonly non-smokers. So, we asked the question, ‘If these cancers are not arising because of tobacco use, what is driving them?’”

To address this question, Dr. Nieva and colleagues conducted a distributed clinical trial—the Epidemiology of Young Lung Cancer—and presented results on diet and exercise in young people with lung cancer at the conference.

“Young people with lung cancer tend to be relatively healthy overall in terms of their diet and exercise habits,” Dr. Nieva said. “But we do find differences between outcomes with regard to exercise and body mass index comparing the EGFR population to the ALK population… all other things being equal, we find that on average, looking at the healthy eating index, patients with EGFR and patients with ALK lung cancer, in general, have much healthier eating habits than the general US population.”

He explained that there were differences in exercise and body mass index between the two populations, which “suggests that there may be an impact of exercise with regard to the propensity to obtain genetic alterations within lung cancer.”

“Of course, much more work needs to be done, but it really points to this idea that the different molecular subtypes of lung cancer are going to have different epidemiologic drivers,” Dr. Nieva said.

The study is ongoing, he explained, noting that the hope is to enroll additional patients to gather additional insights on the genetic features and drivers of lung cancer in young people.

“Patients can still enroll in the Epidemiology of Young Lung Cancer study, so anyone who is interested can simply go [visit] GO2 For Lung Cancer on the web and find information,” Dr. Nieva concluded.