Refining Criteria for Choosing the First-Line Treatment for Real-World Patients with Advanced ALK-Rearranged NSCLC

Choosing the optimal first-line treatment for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) rearrangements can be challenging in daily practice. Although clinical trials with next-generation ALK-tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) have played a key role in evaluating their efficacy and safety, which patients benefit from a specific ALK-TKI may still be questioned. The methodological inconsistencies in these trials, which led to the inclusion of different patient populations, appear to have been inadequately addressed. ALK-rearranged NSCLC is a heterogeneous disease, and co-existing molecular alterations may affect the outcome. The questions explored in these trials appear insufficient to support a personalized approach to the first-line treatment, while defining long-term responders and early progressors would be clinically useful. This narrative review presents several considerations from oncologists' and pathologists' perspectives. We propose defining favorable and unfavorable features, such as histology, type of ALK fusion, co-existing molecular alterations, plasma circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA, performance status, and brain metastases, to help identify patients with lower and higher risk of progression. Consequently, the most potent ALK-TKI to date, Lorlatinib, may be considered as the first-line treatment for high-risk patients with unfavorable features, while sequencing of ALK-TKIs may be appropriate for low-risk patients with favorable features. Although ALK signal inhibition is critical in this disease, it may not be sufficient for clinical control due to de novo co-alterations. A more personalized approach to first-line therapy requires consideration of risk factors for each patient.