Conditions: Non Small Cell Lung Cancer Lung Cancer
Keywords: Lung Cancer Erlotinib clinical stage IB-IIIA
Allocation: NA | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 9
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
The purpose of this study is to try to improve the odds that your cancer may be cured. Pemetrexed and cisplatin are traditional chemotherapy drugs that have been shown to help some patients with non-small cell lung cancer. Many different types of cancer cells, including your type of lung cancer, have a protein on their surface called the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). Stimulation of these receptors can result in growth of cancer cells and progression of cancer. In addition, your cancer has an EGFR mutation (a specific abnormality in the genetic code for EGFR). Erlotinib (TarcevaTM) is a newer drug which has shown benefit for patients with lung cancers that contain an EGFR mutation. Erlotinib works by blocking this receptor and depriving the cancer cells of this message to grow and multiply. In this research study, we plan to combine erlotinib with traditional chemotherapy drugs to see if the combination works better than chemotherapy alone.

The main purpose of this research is to find out the good and bad effects that the combination of these 3 drugs (pemetrexed, cisplatin and erlotinib) has when given to patients with early stage non-small cell lung cancer before surgery. A secondary purpose is to find out the good and bad effects that occur when erlotinib is given to patients after surgery for 2 years.

Detailed description:
Chemotherapy and surgery in combination represents the standard of care for patients with resectable stage IB-IIIA NSCLC. However, the 5-year survival continues to be disappointing despite this standard of care. This study incorporates targeted therapy with an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) as part of a multimodality strategy for stage IB-IIIA resectable NSCLC tumors with a known EGFR activating mutation. The rationale for including only patients with EGFR mutations is based on recent data that reported that patients with advanced NSCLC whose tumor harbor EGFR activating mutations had an objective response rate of 71% with gefitinib compared with a 1% objective response rate in patients with EGFR wild-type tumors.

Arms:
arm 1: This is a open label, single center, phase II trial for patients with clinical stage IB-IIIA NSCLC (T1-3N0-2M0) who have resectable tumors that harbor EGFR activating mutations. Patients will receive erlotinib x 3 weeks prior to initiation of concurrent erlotinib and chemotherapy.

Interventions: intervention 1: erlotinib intervention 2: Pemetrexed intervention 3: Cisplatin intervention 4: Resection
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: One tablet daily of erlotinib pills (150 mg daily) for the first 21 days. After surgery, you will be asked to take adjuvant erlotinib 150 mg po daily x 2 years. intervention 2: pemetrexed 500 mg/m\^2 every 3 weeks for 4 cycles treatment) on the first day of each cycle of treatment. intervention 3: cisplatin 75 mg/m\^2 every 3 weeks for 4 cycles treatment) on the first day of each cycle of treatment. intervention 4: None

Protocol document: