Silas Inman

Optimizing the methods for preclinical research with an emphasis on patient-derived models, may help speed up the translation of new treatment advances from the laboratory to the clinic.

Two new therapies are showing encouraging findings for patients with NSCLC with either RET rearranged or EGFR exon 20 insertions, raising hope that 2 hard-to-target driver alterations may soon have an associated targeted treatment.

Two highly selective MET inhibitors, tepotinib and capmatinib showed promising clinical activity in the first- and second-line treatment of patients with MET exon 14-altered advanced non–small cell lung cancer.

A subcutaneous flat-dose version of daratumumab demonstrated noninferior efficacy with a reduction in the treatment burden compared with the original intravenous formulation of the anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody for patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.

Adjuvant ipilimumab elicited a 25% reduction in the risk of recurrence or death compared with placebo for patients with surgically resected high-risk, stage III melanoma.

Ribociclib plus endocrine therapy demonstrated an estimated overall survival rate of 70.2% at 42 months compared 46.0% for placebo and endocrine therapy in premenopausal women with HR-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer.

Each gene expression-based test available for risk prediction in patients with breast cancer has unique properties and they are not interchangeable, placing importance on the clinical studies used to validate the clinical utility of each assay.

A multitude of BCMA-targeted CAR T-cell therapies are currently in development, each demonstrating different efficacy and safety profiles and each with different constructs.

The combination of ibrutinib and rituximab significantly improved overall survival and progression-free survival compared with standard fludarabine, cyclophosphamide, and rituximab for younger patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Axicabtagene ciloleucel elicited a 2-year overall survival rate of 51% in patients with refractory large B cell lymphoma, representing a clear plateau in the survival curve.

The anti-BCMA CAR T cell therapy bb21217 demonstrated an objective response rate of 83.3%, with a very good partial response or better rate of 75% in patients with heavily pretreated relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.

The CD3 and CD20 bispecific antibody mosunetuzumab demonstrated promising complete remission rates with tolerable toxicity for patients with relapsed/refractory B-cell indolent and aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Single-agent ibrutinib continued to demonstrate strong results after 7 years of follow-up in both the frontline and heavily pretreated, relapsed/refractory setting for patients with CLL and SLL.

Tisagenlecleucel continued to demonstrate durable objective response rates with a median of 19 months of follow-up for patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, according to updated findings from the phase II JULIET study.

Treatment with the CD19-targeted CAR T-cell therapy tisagenlecleucel demonstrated sustained rates of relapse-free survival and overall survival at 24 and 18 months for pediatric and young adult patients with relapsed or refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Future development of novel immunotherapy combinations should be based on individual patient characteristics, such as patient-level immune targets and tumor microenvironment.

The high durable response rates seen with CAR T-cell therapies have helped fill a high unmet need for patients with relapsed/refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, with questions remaining on the optimal way to use these agents following the FDA approval of 2 therapies in the past year.

The FDA has approved moxetumomab pasudotox for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory hairy cell leukemia following at least 2 prior lines of therapy.

The FDA has extended the review period for a supplemental biologics license application for atezolizumab for use in combination with bevacizumab, carboplatin, and paclitaxel for the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer.

The FDA has granted LOXO-292 a breakthrough therapy designation for the treatment of patients with RET fusion–positive non–small cell lung cancer or RET-mutant medullary thyroid cancer.

As the checkpoint inhibitors move into the frontline setting for patients with non–small cell lung cancer, the focus has been placed on the duration of therapy and what to do in the second-line setting following progression.

RET is set to join the list of ever-expanding actionable driver mutations for non–small cell lung cancer, as there are now 3 highly effective therapies in development.

The past year has witnessed an explosion in immunotherapy combinations for patients with lung cancer, accompanied by a growing knowledge of biomarkers such as PD-L1 and tumor mutation burden; however, an exact standard of care remains elusive.

Several novel targeted therapies are emerging for a growing number of driver mutations in lung cancer, with multiple targeted agents now confirmed standards of care.

Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies have quickly moved from early phase clinical trials to FDA approval for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, with research now exploring ways to shift these agents earlier in the treatment paradigm.

Treatment with the recombinant oncolytic poliovirus PVSRIPO elicited sustained a 2- and 3-year overall survival (OS) rate of 21% (95% CI, 11%-33%) for patients with recurrent grade IV malignant glioblastoma.

The combination of palbociclib (Ibrance) and fulvestrant (Faslodex) failed to improve overall survival compared with fulvestrant and placebo in the phase III PALOMA-3 trial for patients with HR-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer.

Atezolizumab alone or in combination with cobimetinib failed to show superior overall survival compared with regorafenib for patients with chemorefractory metastatic colorectal cancer.

The FDA has incorporated PD-L1 status into the labels for pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and atezolizumab (Tecentriq) for existing frontline approvals for platinum-ineligible patients with urothelial carcinoma.

Treatment with second-line ramucirumab improved median overall survival by 3.1 months compared with placebo in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma with alpha-fetoprotein levels ≥400 ng/ml.