Five times New England in fifty days

Extraordinary achievement of two physicians from LungenClinic Grosshansdorf: Prof. Dr. Martin Reck and Prof. Dr. Klaus F. Rabe (co-)authored five publications in the New England Journal of Medicine between mid-April and beginning of June.

The recently published results came from the disease areas lung cancer and asthma. Immune therapies are in the focus of interest in non-small cell lung cancer. They (re-)activate the patient’s immune defense against the tumor. Unfortunately, to date immune therapies are only suitable for a fraction of patients. But these benefit in two ways: First, their risk of dying from the disease is reduced. Second, the new therapies have less severe side effects especially in comparison with classical chemotherapies. The three studies published in the New England Journal deal with the next level of research, with treatment concepts on combinations of these drugs.

The two studies for asthma also investigate an immune therapy: the antibody Dupilumab was used to block the receptor for IL-4 and IL-13. These two mediators are often deregulated in asthma patients. Both studies resulted in a lower exacerbation rate and a better lung function under treatment with Dupilumab.

The New England Journal of Medicine is a prime address for publication of applied medical research results. Therefore the selection process is quite hard. The impact factor (IF) is often considered to be a measure for the relevance of an article. It represents the average number of citations in a certain journal and adds up to 72 in the case of the New England Journal. The second-best and also very renowned journal Lancet has an IF of 48. Everything  >10 is still quite good and much above-average.

 Martin Reck is head of the oncology department of LungenClinic Grosshansdorf, Klaus Rabe the medical director and head of the pulmonology department. Taking the New England Journal in 2018, the impressive publication record of the seemingly small LungenClinic Grosshansdorf is comparable to that of the two big northern German university hospitals, The University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) and the University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH). This snap-shot shows two New England publications for UKE and four for UKSH. The largest University Clinic in Germany, in Gießen-Marburg, has no such publication at all this year.

These recently published articles result from collaborations with pharmaceutical companies. Patients of LungenClinic can benefit from highly topical research: They are treated corresponding to the state of art of the guidelines and moreover have the opportunity to enter innovative clinical studies.

Further information:

Socinski MA, Jotte RM, Cappuzzo F, Orlandi F, Stroyakovskiy D, Nogami N, Rodriguez-Abreu D, Moro-Sibilot D, Thomas CA, Barlesi F, Finley G, Kelsch C, Lee A, Coleman S, Deng Y, Shen Y, Kowanetz M, Lopez-Chavez A, Sandler A, Reck M, Group IMS (2018) Atezolizumab for First-Line Treatment of Metastatic Nonsquamous NSCLC. N Engl J Med [Epub 4. Juni 2018] Link to teh article

Rabe KF, Nair P, Brusselle G, Maspero JF, Castro M, Sher L, Zhu H, Hamilton JD, Swanson BN, Khan A, Chao J, Staudinger H, Pirozzi G, Antoni C, Amin N, Ruddy M, Akinlade B, Graham NMH, Stahl N, Yancopoulos GD, Teper A (2018) Efficacy and Safety of Dupilumab in Glucocorticoid-Dependent Severe Asthma. N Engl J Med [Epub 21. Mai 2018] Link to the article

Hellmann MD, Ciuleanu TE, Pluzanski A, Lee JS, Otterson GA, Audigier-Valette C, Minenza E, Linardou H, Burgers S, Salman P, Borghaei H, Ramalingam SS, Brahmer J, Reck M, O’Byrne KJ, Geese WJ, Green G, Chang H, Szustakowski J, Bhagavatheeswaran P, Healey D, Fu Y, Nathan F, Paz-Ares L (2018) Nivolumab plus Ipilimumab in Lung Cancer with a High Tumor Mutational Burden. N Engl J Med 378: 2093-2104 Link to the article

Gandhi L, Rodriguez-Abreu D, Gadgeel S, Esteban E, Felip E, De Angelis F, Domine M, Clingan P, Hochmair MJ, Powell SF, Cheng SY, Bischoff HG, Peled N, Grossi F, Jennens RR, Reck M, Hui R, Garon EB, Boyer M, Rubio-Viqueira B, Novello S, Kurata T, Gray JE, Vida J, Wei Z, Yang J, Raftopoulos H, Pietanza MC, Garassino MC, Investigators K- (2018) Pembrolizumab plus Chemotherapy in Metastatic Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer. N Engl J Med 378: 2078-2092 Link to the article

Castro M, Corren J, Pavord ID, Maspero J, Wenzel S, Rabe KF, Busse WW, Ford L, Sher L, FitzGerald JM, Katelaris C, Tohda Y, Zhang B, Staudinger H, Pirozzi G, Amin N, Ruddy M, Akinlade B, Khan A, Chao J, Martincova R, Graham NMH, Hamilton JD, Swanson BN, Stahl N, Yancopoulos GD, Teper A (2018) Dupilumab Efficacy and Safety in Moderate-to-Severe Uncontrolled Asthma. N Engl J Med [Epub 21. Mai 2018] Link to the article

 

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