Is anyone familiar with this cell type. Sorry if you saw this before, but I wanted to throw it out there again. There isn't much info on the web and I thought I would turn to my trusty friends on Inspire.com. I am wondering how aggressive this cell type in comparison to adeno, BAC, or squamous.
i dont know much about it. My dad has a mixed cell type though. It is adeno and squamous. We were told it was very aggressive. That scares the hell outta me. Prayers to you and stay strong!
It's not that uncommon, perhaps somewhere in the range of 5-10% of NSCLC cases. I don't think it's particularly more aggressive than other NSCLC subtypes -- it's just a combination of some parts that have more squamous features and others that seem to look more like an adenocarcinoma. The importance of this is that certain treatments, such as Avastin, are not recommended for patients with more than 50% squamous cancer. But they specifically mention the "50%" threshold because we do see a mix of squamous and non-squamous pretty often, and the presumption is that if it's only a small component of squamous, it's not clearly at a higher risk of bleeding complications with anti-angiogenic drugs like avastin. There are other agents, like alimta, that appear to work much more effectively in non-squamous cancers, so I might be far more inclined to recommend it for someone with a small component of squamous NSCLC than for someone with predominantly squamous NSCLC.
There is a separate mixed pathology of lung cancer that includes some component of NSCLC and some parts of SCLC. In that situation, it's treated like SCLC, with any component of small cell trumping the part that looks like NSCLC.
-Jack West, MD
Medical Director, Thoracic Oncology Program
Swedish Cancer Institute
Seattle, WA
President & CEO, Global Resource for Advancing Cancer Education
www.cancergrace.org
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