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Each year, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting brings together the world’s largest gathering of the oncology community. Approximately 40,000 researchers, physicians, nurses, advocates, biotech and pharmaceutical professionals, and others, meet annually to discuss research that shapes how cancer is diagnosed, treated, and managed.
The 2026 meeting took place May 29 - June 2 in Chicago and included important advances in lung cancer treatment. We saw awe-inspiring long-term results from a targeted therapy, new approaches for patients with specific biomarkers, combination treatments designed to affect multiple cancer pathways simultaneously, and strategies that aim to move care beyond chemotherapy in certain patient populations.
Here we present top highlights from this year’s ASCO meeting.
What These Terms Mean
Overall survival: How long people in a study lived after starting treatment. This is one of the clearest ways to understand whether a treatment helps people live longer.
Progression-free survival: How long people lived before the cancer grew, spread, or worsened. A longer progression-free survival means the treatment helped keep the cancer controlled for more time.
Response rate: The percentage of people whose tumors shrank by a meaningful amount. Response rate can be encouraging, but it does not always mean people live longer, so researchers also look at survival outcomes.
Median: The middle point in a study result. For example, if median progression-free survival is 12 months, half of the people went longer than 12 months before the cancer worsened, and half had cancer worsen sooner.
Biggest Lung Cancer News from the Conference
7-year update from the CROWN trial on treating ALK-positive NSCLC
This long-term follow-up data showcases the longest progression-free survival ever reported in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The impressive phase 3 CROWN study looks at lorlatinib, an oral tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), as initial treatment for people with advanced ALK-positive NSCLC. After 7 years, 55% of people taking lorlatinib were still alive without disease progression compared to 9.1 months with crizotinib. In addition, this treatment continued to show strong control of brain metastasis. This data reinforces the power of precision medicine and exemplifies what’s possible through sustained investment in lung cancer research.
Early-stage treatment for RET-positive lung cancer
RET-positive lung cancer, a rare subtype of NSCLC, is currently treated with TKIs, such as selpercatinib and pralsetinib. The FDA has approved these two treatments for metastatic RET-positive NSCLC. Results from the phase 3 LIBRETTO-432 clinical trial, which studied the effectiveness of selpercatinib after surgery or radiation in people with early-stage (stage II–IIIA) RET fusion-positive NSCLC, showed that at 24 months, 91.5% of patients who received selpercatinib were alive, without recurrence or progression, compared with 61.1% on placebo. While we are still awaiting overall survival data from this study, these are exciting findings that are likely to impact treatment plans. In addition, this study reinforces the importance of getting biomarker testing for patients diagnosed with all stages of NSCLC.
Paving the Way for Future Breakthroughs
A new approach to treating relapsed small cell lung cancer
Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) often responds to treatment at first but can come back quickly, leaving patients with limited options. ABBV-706 is an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) that targets the protein SEZ6 and is designed to deliver chemotherapy directly to SCLC cells, while sparing healthy tissue. This drug was tested alone and in combination with an anti-PD-L1 immunotherapy in patients with SCLC whose cancer had come back after treatment. In this phase 1 study, the median overall survival was 14.3 months among patients receiving the recommended dose as a monotherapy. Combining the drug with immunotherapy didn’t add significant side effects and warrants further study. This exciting work opens the door to a new approach for treating patients with SCLC. Follow-up studies are already underway.
Promising option to treat squamous NSCLC
Ivonescimab is an immunotherapy designed to block two cancer-supporting pathways at once: PD-1 and VEGF. The phase 3 HARMONi-6 clinical trial showed that ivonescimab plus chemotherapy helped people with advanced squamous NSCLC live longer than tislelizumab, a PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor, plus chemotherapy. The results showed median overall survival was 27.9 months with ivonescimab plus chemotherapy versus 23.7 months. If confirmed in future studies, this could add an important first-line option for patients with squamous cell lung cancer without a targetable driver mutation.
Pumitamig plus chemo in first-line advanced-stage NSCLC
Pumitamig is a drug designed to target both PD-L1 and VEGF, combining immune activation with anti-angiogenic activity. In the phase 2 portion of the global phase 2/3 ROSETTA Lung-02 trial, researchers tested pumitamig plus chemotherapy as an initial treatment for patients with advanced NSCLC without actionable biomarkers. The response rates were strong with 81.8% in patients with squamous disease and 72.7% in those with non-squamous NSCLC. The phase 3 portion of the clinical trial is ongoing and compares the pumitamig plus chemotherapy regimen with standard pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy.
Developing a TKI for non-classical EGFR mutations
Approximately 30% of patients with NSCLC have EGFR mutations. Over the past two decades, tremendous progress has been made in developing treatments that target “classical” EGFR mutations. Scientists are also working to improve options for patients with “non-classical” EGFR mutations that do not respond to current FDA-approved TKIs. To address this unmet need, researchers have developed silevertinib, a fourth-generation EGFR-targeted TKI intended to treat tumors with classical and non-classical EGFR mutations. Data from a phase 2 study showed promising results using silevertinib to treat patients with advanced NSCLC with non-classical EGFR mutations.
The study showed 60% of patients had tumor reductions and 86% of patients with brain metastasis saw a benefit when treated with silevertinib. While larger studies are needed, these results offer hope for patients whose tumors have non-classical EGFR mutations.
Building a new first-line option for NSCLC with EGFR exon 20 insertions
EGFR exon 20 NSCLC has historically been harder to treat with standard EGFR-targeted medicines, leaving chemotherapy as a common initial treatment. Sunvozertinib, a TKI, has received accelerated approval by the FDA for treating patients with advanced NSCLC with EGFR exon 20 insertions after initial treatment. Researchers conducted the phase 3 WU-KONG28 study to study the benefit of sunvozertinib versus platinum-based chemotherapy as initial treatment for this population. In this larger study of 324 patients, sunvozertinib significantly delayed cancer growth, with median progression-free survival of 10.3 months versus 7.5 months with chemotherapy. Tumor responses to treatment were also more common and lasted longer with sunvozertinib.
While we are still waiting to see overall survival data from this study, these results suggest progress in developing a chemotherapy-free option for the initial treatment of this lung cancer subtype.
Reshaping first-line treatment for KRAS G12C+ NSCLC
KRAS G12C is one of the most common targetable mutations in lung cancer, but first-line treatment often relies on immunotherapy plus chemotherapy. KRAScendo-170 is a phase 1b/2 study testing divarasib, a next-generation KRAS G12C inhibitor, in combination with pembrolizumab (immunotherapy), with the goal of creating a chemotherapy-free option for patients newly diagnosed with advanced NSCLC with KRAS G12C. Early results showed strong activity, including a response rate around 70% with divarasib plus pembrolizumab, and reported median progression-free survival of 19.3 months in patients whose tumors expressed PD-L1. These findings are encouraging and support the global phase 3 trial that is currently enrolling patients.
Innovative vaccine strategy for ALK-positive lung cancer
As we saw in the CROWN study, ALK-positive NSCLC can respond very well to ALK TKIs. However, drug resistance often develops over time through new ALK mutations. Another innovative idea featured at ASCO came from the first-in-human phase 1b ARCHER study, which tests ALK-Vac, a peptide vaccine designed to train the immune system to recognize common ALK resistance mutations. In this small study, patients continued their current ALK TKI and received the vaccine.
The results showed the majority of patients developed a promising anti-tumor immune response, and the vaccine appeared safe and well tolerated overall. While this is early research, it introduces the concept of using a vaccine to delay or prevent drug resistance in ALK-positive lung cancer.
Exploring GLP-1 treatment and cancer progression
GLP-1 receptor agonists are medicines commonly used to treat type 2 diabetes and support weight loss. Researchers are also studying whether they may influence cancer progression. In a real-world analysis presented at the meeting, researchers compared people with stage I–III obesity-related cancers (such as lung, breast, colorectal and liver cancers) who started a GLP-1 drug after diagnosis with similar patients who received a different diabetes medication. The study found lower rates of progression to stage IV disease in several cancers, including NSCLC, where 10% of patients taking a GLP-1 drug progressed compared with 22% of those taking the other medication. While this study does not prove that GLP-1 medicines directly slowed cancer spread, the findings are intriguing and support future studies to better understand whether these drugs could play a role in cancer care.
Together, these studies reflect a lung cancer treatment landscape that continues to evolve with progress across targeted therapy, immunotherapy, antibody-drug conjugates, vaccines, and more. For patients and their families, each advance brings renewed hope: more precise options, novel approaches to treatment, and continued momentum toward better outcomes!
We are grateful for the patients and their families, researchers, clinicians, and study teams whose commitment makes this progress possible and whose work continues to push the field toward better care for everyone affected by lung cancer.