CURB your cynicism.

Headline: Consolidative ablative radiation for oligoprogressive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) corresponds to a 4-fold benefit in progression-free survival with correlative decreases in circulating tumor DNA.

The Study: Who can forget the CURB trial headlining last year with blockbuster results with ablative radiation to sites of NSCLC oligoprogression and mehhh results with the same for breast cancer? Let’s now forget about breast cancer while delving more into the 59 patients with NSCLC where median progression-free survival was 2 months without radiation versus 10 months with. In addition to these clinical outcomes, the detection of circulating tumor-derived genetic mutations decreased significantly after radiation. Those with declining tumor-derived mutations had better outcomes while a rise in these markers signaled a high risk of subsequent progression.

TBL: Ablative radiation to NSCLC oligoprogression is a safe, low-burden, effective way to curb systemic disease in both biological and clinically-meaningful rationales. | Tsai, ASTRO 2022