Recently, the ADAURA study demonstrated statistically significant improved disease-free survival (DFS) with adjuvant osimertinib in patients with resected stage IB-IIIA non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) harboring an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation. A consistent improvement in disease-free survival (DFS) was shown, regardless of whether or not patients received adjuvant chemotherapy. Given benefit seen with and without adjuvant chemotherapy, some clinicians may be tempted to forgo chemotherapy and only offer osimertinib post surgical resection. Would this approach be appropriate? Here we carefully dissect data from the ADAURA trial and review how this may fit into the existing evidence on the treatment of early stage NSCLC by discussing five themes, the study design of ADAURA, attempts on adjuvant tyrosine kinase inhibitors, prior studies to support adjuvant chemotherapy, how adjuvant chemotherapy was administered in ADAURA and consideration of toxicities.
Keywords: adjuvant therapy; disease-free survival; early stage non-small cell lung cancer; epidermal growth factor receptor; osimertinib; overall survival.
© 2022 Brazel and Nagasaka.