Top 5 advances in medicine this week (🧵) 1. A drug that beats chemotherapy in a subset of lung cancers Small cell lung cancer is usually treated with chemotherapy, but resistance is common, and side-effects can be severe Tarlatamab is a bispecific antibody: it recruits T cells directly to cancer cells - via a protein expressed by ~90% of small cell lung cancers (called DLL3) Tarlatamab has accelerated approval to treat small cell lung cancer as second line after platinum chemotherapy - this phase 3 trial provides the data to (potentially) upgrade this to full approval Tarlatamab improved overall survival vs. physician’s choice of chemotherapy, with fewer grade 3 adverse events (though with a new side-effect - cytokine release syndrome) Ongoing phase 3 trials are testing Tarlatamab as part of first-line combinations nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NE…