In order to improve smoking cessation efforts, health care providers need to understand options for smoking cessation therapy as well as the clinical data supporting these interventions. Pharmacists can play a critical role in patient education, therapy recommendations, and therapy management for smoking cessation.

Many new options exist for the treatment of advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in addition to traditional platinum-based chemotherapy. Pharmacists should be aware of the new data and recommendations for immunotherapies and targeted therapies, and how they relate to improvements in clinical efficacy and quality of life. It is also important to be aware of the potential for unique and potentially severe adverse events that can occur with these therapies; therefore, pharmacists should educate patients about the possibility of adverse events and the need to report symptoms to their health care teams to avoid severe complications.

Recent advances have led to rational drug development as new therapeutically actionable molecular targets have emerged. It is important for clinicians to be aware of how to incorporate these novel treatment options into clinical practice in ways that achieve meaningful patient outcomes, as well as best practices for providing supportive care and patient education.

Both acute and chronic graft-versus-host disease, while fairly common in allogeneic HSCT, can be potentially fatal. The clinical manifestations of this complication can linger for years and often times impair quality of life drastically. Hematology and oncology specialists can optimize care by early recognition and prompt initiation of systemic therapies.

Pharmacists should be aware of data on targeted therapy and immunotherapy for RCC and be able to make appropriate therapy recommendations. In addition, pharmacists play an important role in the management of toxicity of targeted therapy or immunotherapy and encouraging compliance for patients on targeted therapies for RCC.

Pediatric ALL is a potentially curable malignancy and systemic therapy is the mainstay of treatment. Understanding the diagnosis, workup, and subsequent treatment of this disease will help clinicians play an important role in providing medication-related recommendations, supportive care, and patient counseling which can improve the outcomes and the quality of patient care.