Company: OCEA
Filing Date: 2025-04-08
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001641172-25-003155
Chunk: 2071

Company: Ocean Biomedical, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-04-08
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 2071
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 with lung cancer at some point in their lives. It is estimated that 229,000 new cases of lung cancer are diagnosed annually
in the United States, representing about 13% of all cancer diagnoses. NSCLC is the most common type of lung cancer, accounting for approximately
85% of new lung cancer cases.

17

NSCLC
continues to rank among the cancers with the lowest five-year survival rates and has one of the largest disease burdens in terms of disability-adjusted
life years.

Staging
is a way of describing the severity and extent of a cancer’s growth and spread. The stage of NSCLC is based on a combination of
several factors, including the size and location of the primary tumor and whether it has spread to the lymph nodes and/or other parts
of the body.

There
are five stages for NSCLC: stage 0 and stages I through IV. In general, an earlier stage of NSCLC is linked with a better outcome. Unfortunately,
a significant proportion of patients, in the order of 40% to 50%, are still diagnosed with hard-to-treat stage IV disease.

There
are currently five main ways to treat NSCLC: surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, targeted therapy and immunotherapy. The use of
these treatment options for NSCLC is based mainly on the stage of the cancer, but other factors, such as a person’s overall health
and lung function, as well as certain traits of the cancer itself, such as its molecular characteristics, are also important.

Treatment
decisions often follow either formal or informal guidelines. Treatment options can be ranked or prioritized into lines of therapy: first-line
therapy, second-line therapy, third-line therapy, and so on. First-line therapy, sometimes called induction therapy, primary therapy
or front-line therapy, is the first therapy that will likely be attempted. If a first-line therapy either fails to produce sufficient
antitumor response or produces intolerable side effects, additional therapies may be substituted or added to the treatment regimen, known
as second-line or third-line treatments. Often, multiple therapies may be administered simultaneously, known as combination therapy or
polytherapy.

Surgery
is usually the first choice for early stage disease followed by radiation and chemotherapy. Targeted therapies and immunotherapy are
the main options in advanced disease, in stages III and IV.

Targeted
therapy is a treatment that targets the cancer’s specific genes, proteins or the tissue environment that contributes to cancer