Jonathan Villena-Vargas, MD, sits down with Erin Gillaspie, MD, to examine key findings from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, including advances in targeted therapy, dual-pathway immunotherapy, artificial intelligence, and adaptive treatment strategies that are reshaping thoracic oncology.

Best of Lung Cancer Science 2026  - American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)

Surgical Hot Topics

Hi everyone and welcome to the 2026 Best of Lung Cancer Science podcast from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons that explores the latest science and innovations that are helping to shape our field. I'm your host, Dr. Melanie Edwards and today we're diving into the biggest lung cancer stories from the 2026 ASCO annual meeting and what they mean for thoracic surgeons. Joining me today is Dr. Jonathan Vilana Vargas. He's an assistant professor of cardiothoracic surgery at the New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center

who is on site for ASCO reviewing the latest data. John, thank you so much for being here. There was so much exciting science this year. So let's just kick things off with your overall impressions of the meeting. What stood out to you the most on the lung cancer track? Thank you, Erin. Thanks for the invitation. You know, the biggest kind of talking point to me was, you know, thinking about the libretto trial and RET and basically molecular profiling and how much targeted therapy works. Right.

And in addition, there was something that, you know, I'd want to discuss a little bit later on with regards to adjuvant therapy and actually a failed trial and kind of what that means to us and the immune checkpoint blockade. Also, there's been some, you know, some interesting things, I think, about neoadjuvant therapy. You know, this this concept of potentially targeted therapy, again, making unresectable disease, resectable disease, which I think we'll talk about as well.

And basically a couple of smaller abstracts, but good studies showing that, you know, bispecifics and ADCs are here. And, you know, they're they're a little bit more of a complex backbone and treatment, but actually are making a big difference.

Best of Lung Cancer Science 2026 - American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

Best of Lung Cancer Science 2026 - American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.