Dr. Christine Lovly and Dr. Vamsi Velcheti discuss practice-changing lung cancer data presented at the 2026 ASCO Annual Meeting, including key studies on squamous cell lung cancer, NSCLC, and SCLC.<br>LINK TO FULL TRANSCRIPT

Lung Cancer Highlights From ASCO26: HARMONi-6, LIBRETTO-436, and More

ASCO Daily News

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** ASCO Daily News

## Transcript

[SPEAKER_A] Hello and welcome to the ASCO Daily News Podcast. I'm Dr. Vamsi Velcheti, your guest host for today. I'm a professor of medicine and chief of hematology and oncology at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, Florida.

[SPEAKER_B] And hi everyone, Christine Lovly. I am also a professor of medical oncology at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center.

[SPEAKER_A] So we are coming to you fresh from the heels of the 2026 ASCO Annual Meeting, and this year's meeting was a blockbuster for lung cancer research. We are so excited to talk about all the practice-changing data and exciting developments in the field of lung cancer. I'm so excited to have you, Dr. Lovly, here to discuss and put things in context and how these findings can impact patient care for our patients with lung cancer.

[SPEAKER_B] Oh, thank you so much. Amazing to see so many advances in early-stage disease, late-stage disease, HGA positive, OGA negative, small cell. I mean, just the entire spectrum of lung cancer care. That's really so amazing and promising and why we love being lung cancer doctors.

[SPEAKER_A] So let's just jump right in and the exciting study that was presented at the plenaries. Was the HARMONi-6 trial. Dr. Lovly, what do you think about the study? And love to hear your perspectives.

[SPEAKER_B] This was one of the plenary studies. So, you know, the best of the best, right? 5 studies presented at the plenary and this was one of them. And so the HARMONi-6 study was looking at ivanesemab, which is a PD-1 VEGF bispecific antibody plus chemotherapy versus tizolizumab, which is a PD-1 antibody plus chemotherapy in the first-line treatment of patients with previously untreated advanced squamous lung cancer. And I'll just pause for a second and say, there's a huge unmet need in squamous lung cancer right now, from my perspective. We've seen so many advances in lung adenocarcinoma, really so many advances in small cell recently. There just hasn't been a lot in squamous. I was really excited to see these data come out looking at a novel agent, this PD-1 VEGF bispecific ivinastamab. Of course, we've seen this drug in other contexts before, but this is the new data in squamous lung cancer. Yeah. Squamous Lung Cancer. This was a study that was done largely in China, looking at patients with squamous, advanced squamous lung cancer, and was a positive study, which was why it was presented at the plenary.

[SPEAKER_A] Happy to see that data in squamous. You know, it's certainly a population of unmet need. PD-1 agents have shown promise in the squamous cell population, but we haven't really had significant improvements beyond the KEYNOTE-406 data that we have seen.

[SPEAKER_B] Well, let's talk about this a little bit more and talk about the numbers, because I think this was a positive study, which we could make an argument this was a meaningful benefit because it actually showed both a PFS and an OS benefit, and...

Lung Cancer Highlights From ASCO26: HARMONi-6, LIBRETTO-436, and More

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Lung Cancer Highlights From ASCO26: HARMONi-6, LIBRETTO-436, and More

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.