Immuno-Oncology

Immunotherapy pioneer James P. Allison, PhD, has been named the 2015 recipient of the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award by the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation.

Tom Herzog, MD, discusses the vaccine ADXS11-001 (axalimogene filolisbac) in patients with persistent or recurrent metastatic cervical cancer.

Nivolumab (Opdivo) demonstrated clinical activity and safety in patients with platinum-resistant ovarian cancer.

Nivolumab (Opdivo) has received an FDA breakthrough therapy designation for the treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma.

Carolyn D. Britten, MD, chief, Division of Hematology Oncology, associate director, Clinical Investigations, at the Hollings Cancer Center, Medical University of South Carolina, discusses questions that remain in immunotherapy.

A chemotherapy-free regimen of nivolumab and ipilimumab demonstrated activity as a first-line therapy for patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer.

Treatment with the PD-1 inhibitor nivolumab demonstrated a 32% reduction in the risk of death compared with docetaxel for patients with previously treated squamous non–small cell lung cancer.

Patients with newly diagnosed metastatic non-small lung cancer had double the expected response when the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab was added to chemotherapy.

Dennis Slamon, MD, PhD, discusses the inhibition of CDK 4/6 and PD-1, which represent two of the most exciting developments in the field of metastatic breast cancer.

Nivolumab (Opdivo) has received an FDA priority review designation for patients with previously treated nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer.

S. Yousuf Zafar, MD, associate professor of medicine, Duke Cancer Institute, discusses the potential of immunotherapy for the treatment of patients with colorectal cancer (CRC).

Anna Pavlick, DO, discusses immunotherapy and targeted combination regimens in advanced melanoma.

Mismatch repair deficiency may serve as an immuno-oncology biomarker and may illustrate the clinical utility of analyzing the number of mutations per tumor.

The FDA has assigned a priority review designation to the intravesical immunotherapy MCNA as a treatment for patients with high-risk non-muscle invasive bladder cancer following first-line bacillus Calmette-Guerin therapy.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors can be of significant value in combatting recurrent and metastatic triple negative breast cancer, Rita Nanda, MD, told physicians at the recent 14th Annual International Congress on the Future of Breast Cancer.

The FDA has granted a priority review to pembrolizumab (Keytruda) as a frontline treatment for patients with advanced melanoma.

Jeffrey R. Infante, MD, discusses the fully human PD-L1 IgG1 antibody avelumab, which demonstrated clinical activity in patients with previously treated, recurrent/refractory ovarian cancer in a phase Ib open-label expansion trial.

Atezolizumab met the primary endpoint of objective response in PD-L1–positive patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer in the phase II BIRCH trial.

An improved understanding of the natural history of HPV, its interaction with the host immune system, and the distinct molecular alterations underlying HPV-positive cancers, are fueling development of new drugs, particularly immunotherapies geared toward generating an HPV-specific immune response.

The FDA has extended the review period for frontline nivolumab in patients with advanced melanoma by 3 months, to allow ample time to review additional data submitted by the PD-1 inhibitor's developer Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Premal H. Thaker, MD, discusses EGEN-001 in combination with pegylated liposomal doxorubicin and the potential of immunotherapy agents in ovarian and other similar cancers.

Achieving true precision medicine with PD-1/PD-L1 agents in NSCLC will only come from biomarker-driven frontline regimens delivered to the right patients.

Immunotherapy for the treatment of cancer has evolved alongside our improved understanding of the immune system.

Yung-Jue Bang, MD, PhD, discusses how the results of the KEYNOTE-012 study demonstrate the potential of immunotherapy in treating gastric cancer.

Results from clinical trials demonstrate that immunotherapy is ready to take center stage in the fight against bladder cancer.

A number of clinical trials are now assessing PD-1 and PD-L1 inhibitors in combination with chemotherapy, targeted therapies, and radiation therapy in an attempt to further improve outcomes for patients with non–small cell lung cancer.

Paul Bunn, MD, discussed the latest translational advances in NSCLC at the 2015 International Lung Cancer Congress.

At the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting, we witnessed an extraordinary explosion into the general oncology consciousness of the Programmed Death-1: Programmed Death Ligand-1 axis and drugs that target that interaction.

Emerging clinical data suggest that targeted immunotherapy in cancer will become an integral part of the clinical management strategy for solid tumors.

Tanguy Y. Seiwert, MD, discusses the significance of the expansion results of KEYNOTE-012 for advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck.