Immuno-Oncology

Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, led some of the first trials of gefitinib, the EGFR inhibitor that helped introduce targeted therapies of this important mutation into the treatment landscape of non–small cell lung cancer.

Benjamin P. Levy, MD, director, Thoracic Medical Oncology, Mount Sinai Beth Israel, associate director, Cancer Clinical Trials Office, Mount Sinai Hospital, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, discusses new data on immunotherapy for lung cancer.

Lung cancer experts provided insights into recent developments in the treatment of the disease, covering topics ranging from resistance to targeted therapies to immunotherapy agents under study, during the 9th Annual New York Lung Cancer Symposium in New York City.

Vassiliki Papadimitrakopoulou, MD, provides an update on research into pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for the treatment of lung cancer.

Both HPV-positive and -negative head and neck cancers are "outstanding candidates for immunotherapeutic strategies," said Andrew G. Sikora, MD, PhD, Baylor College of Medicine, at the 2014 Chemotherapy Foundation Symposium.

The addition of the GM-CSF agent sargramostim to the CTLA-4 inhibitor ipilimumab (Yervoy) prolonged overall survival (OS) and lowered toxicity for patients with unresectable stage III or IV melanoma

The combination of a FLT3L-primed in situ vaccine, low-dose radiotherapy, and a toll-like receptor 3 (TLR) 3 agonist has been shown to be feasible, safe, and immunologically and clinically effective in a phase I/II study for patients with low-grade lymphoma

Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, presented a top 10 list on immunotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer at the 2014 Multidisciplinary Symposium in Thoracic Oncology.

Nivolumab combined with platinum-based doublet chemotherapy achieved a manageable safety profile with clinical efficacy that was similar to single-agent nivolumab in patients with advanced NSCLC.

The PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab achieved an ORR of 15% with a median duration of response that was not yet reached at a median 11-month follow-up for patients with advanced, refractory NSCLC.

Treatment with PD-1 immunotherapy across various oncology clinical trials has been associated with the induction of painless thyroiditis, characterized by transient thyrotoxicosis and hypothyroidism, in patients with metastatic malignancies

The FDA has granted a breakthrough therapy designation to pembrolizumab (Keytruda), an anti-PD-1 therapy, for the treatment of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who are EGFR mutation- or ALK rearrangement-negative and whose disease has progressed on or following platinum-based chemotherapy.

A new method to identify protein mutations in cancer cells may help researchers create a personalized vaccine to treat patients with recurrent ovarian cancer.

The combination of the investigational PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab (Opdivo) and the oral BTK inhibitor ibrutinib (Imbruvica) will be evaluated in a phase I/II trial as a treatment for patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Checkpoint inhibitors targeting the PD-1 receptor and its ligand, PD-L1, are showing efficacy in early-phase clinical trials in urothelial bladder cancer, generating the promise of new therapies for a disease that has not had a significant treatment advance in 30 years.

A clinical trial collaboration between Novartis and BMS has resulted in the establishment of several novel combination trials involving the PD-1 inhibitor nivolumab and targeted therapies against ALK, c-MET, and T790M for patients with NSCLC.

Eduardo Fernandez, MD, PhD, FACRO, Senior Vice President, Medical Affairs / Medical Director for Latin America, Radiation Oncologist, 21st Century Oncology, discusses the potential for immunotherapy and radiation therapy to be used together to treat prostate cancer.

In a recent guideline for the treatment of men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) shared their thoughts on the implementation of six drugs approved since their previous recommendations were issued in 2007, as well as on older drugs.

Tanios Bekaii-Saab, MD, discusses the results of a phase II study of the oncolytic virus reolysin in the first-line treatment metastatic adenocarcinoma of the pancreas.

Durable responses were obtained with the immune checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab, with a manageable safety profile, in a phase II dose-ranging trial conducted in patients with previously treated metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC).