Negative trials presented at the ESMO Congress 2023 suggest that a new treatment strategy may be required for patients with metastatic disease

Progression-free survival was longer with tumour-specific versus standard chemotherapy in two trials, but further work is needed to improve prognosis for these patients

Study findings support routine RET-mutation testing for all patients with advanced MTC, but further work is needed to identify predictive markers

Alectinib is the first ALK inhibitor to significantly improve DFS in a phase III trial across disease stages

Results from the LIBRETTO-431 trial reinforce the use of selpercatinib as the first-line choice and are likely to widen patient access to treatment

CheckMate 77T demonstrates significantly improved event-free survival with neoadjuvant nivolumab plus chemotherapy followed by adjuvant nivolumab compared with chemotherapy and adjuvant placebo

The bispecific EGFR/MET-directed monoclonal antibody looks set to become the standard of care in this setting, but toxicity has to be managed carefully

Safety and efficacy data of some novel immunotherapy agents are encouraging, but more research is needed to identify biomarkers and the optimal treatment schedule 

Cancer imaging and identification of predictive biomarkers are the best performed tasks reported in studies presented at ESMO Congress 2023

Scarcity of prospective data was reported as well as a limited use of real-world evidence as definitive evidence to regulatory approval decisions of targeted therapies in Europe