Tambotatug pelitecan beats topotecan in SCLC: interim

Editor's Pick: Tambotatug Pelitecan in Small-Cell Lung Cancer after Platinum-Based Therapy (New England Journal of Medicine, 2026)
Welcome to This Week in Oncology. This week we're covering 10 notable papers spanning a wave of new antibody-based drugs in lung, breast and head and neck cancer, circulating tumour DNA and artificial intelligence as tools for risk stratification, and a cluster of care-delivery studies that ask how symptom monitoring, palliative care relationships and industry money shape what our patients actuall…
This week's papers:
• Tambotatug Pelitecan in Small-Cell Lung Cancer after Platinum-Based Therapy. — New England Journal of Medicine 2026 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42734213)
• Safety and antitumor activity of the first-in-class EGFR-HER3 bispecific antibody-drug conjugate iza-bren (BL-B01D1) in patients with pretreated locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer: a phase 1b study. — Annals of Oncology 2026 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42727637)
• Amivantamab plus pembrolizumab in previously untreated recurrent/metastatic head and neck squamous cell cancer: Results from the phase 1b/2 OrigAMI-4 study. — Clinical Cancer Research 2026 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42742405)
• P-Loop/αC-Helix Compressing Mutations and Exon 20 Insertions in EGFR-Mutant NSCLC: A Rapidly Evolving Therapeutic Landscape. — Journal of Clinical Oncology 2026 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42735369)
• Circulating tumor DNA-guided de-escalation or escalation of adjuvant therapy in high-risk stage II and stage III colon cancer: the phase 2 PEGASUS trial. — Nature Cancer 2026 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42736431)
• Circulating Tumor DNA Profiling Defines Risk Classification in Patients With Ewing Sarcoma: A Report From the Children's Oncology Group and the LEOPARD Study. — Journal of Clinical Oncology 2026 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42743455)
• Clinical usability of an explainable AI decision support tool and evaluation of multimodal models in NSCLC. — Nature Medicine 2026 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42733093)
• Patient-reported symptom monitoring in patients with lung cancer (SYMPRO-Lung trial): long-term, post-hoc survival results of a multicentre, stepped-wedged, cluster-randomised clinical trial. — The Lancet Oncology 2026 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42727592)
• Effective Palliative Care for Hospice Transitions. — JAMA Internal Medicine 2026 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42734951)
• Financial Payments From Drug Manufacturers to Oncologists and Use of Guideline-Preferred Cancer Treatments. — Journal of Clinical Oncology 2026 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42743544)
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