About Lung-MAP

Lung-MAP is a cancer clinical trial designed to quickly and efficiently test new treatments for advanced non-small cell lung cancers – which make up about 85 percent of all lung cancer diagnoses in the United States. Lung-MAP is offered at hospitals and clinics all over the country, making it easier for lung cancer patients to participate and get access to investigational treatments to fight their cancer.

Lung-MAP is unique. It’s the first precision medicine trial in lung cancer supported by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the federal National Institutes of Health, and is the first major NCI trial to test multiple treatments, simultaneously, under one “umbrella” design – which makes Lung-MAP more flexible and more efficient than typical cancer trials, and speeds the development process for new cancer drugs. Lung-MAP is also an unprecedented public-private partnership, one that not only includes the NCI and its National Clinical Trials Network, led by the SWOG Cancer Research Network, Friends of Cancer Research, the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, Foundation Medicine, pharmaceutical companies, and several lung cancer advocacy organizations.

Here is how it works. Patients who enroll in Lung-MAP get a state-of-the-art genomic profile to determine the genomic alterations, or mutations, which may drive the growth of their cancer. Based on those results, patients are matched to a treatment being tested on Lung-MAP. If there isn’t a genomic “match,” patients have an option of receiving immunotherapy treatments used in the trial.

Launched in 2014, Lung-MAP has registered nearly 2,000 patients, and some have received new treatments that have extended or improved their lives. In 2018, the trial was significantly expanded to include patients with all advanced non-small cell lung cancers, meaning thousands more people with lung cancer will have access to investigational treatments to fight their disease.