Immuno-Oncology

Sumanta Kumar Pal, MD, associate clinical professor, Department of Medical Oncology and Therapeutics Research, co-director, Kidney Cancer Program, City of Hope, discusses the role of PD-L1 in metastatic renal cell carcinoma.

Researchers now are turning their attention toward earlier disease settings involving patients who are refractory to standard therapies in nonmuscle-invasive bladder cancer or who are poor candidates for surgery in muscle-invasive bladder cancer.

Combining frontline atezolizumab with chemotherapy improved overall survival and progression-free survival compared with chemotherapy alone in patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer.

The FDA has accepted a supplemental biologics license application for the use of pembrolizumab as an adjuvant treatment for patients with resected, high-risk stage III melanoma.

Matthew Galsky, MD, professor of medicine, hematology, and medical oncology, Mount Sinai Hospital, discusses the rationale for the IMvigor130 study in metastatic bladder cancer.

John A. Glaspy, MD, professor of medicine, Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center (JCCC), director, JCCC Clinical Research Unit and Women's Cancer Research Program, University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, discusses immunogenicity in endometrial cancer.

The FDA has accepted a supplemental biologics license application for the combination of nivolumab plus ipilimumab for the frontline treatment of patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer with tumor mutational burden ≥10 mutations per megabase.

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.

Neeraj Agarwal, MD, discusses his preferred sequencing strategies for treating patients with kidney cancer, and ongoing immunotherapy research in the field.

Matthew R. Zibelman, MD, assistant professor, Department of Hematology/Oncology, Fox Chase Cancer Center, advisory committee of the Association of Community Cancer Centers, discusses the management of immune-related adverse events (irAEs).

Hossein Borghaei, DO, MS, chief, Division of Thoracic Medical Oncology, director, Lung Cancer Risk Assessment, associate professor, Department of Hematology/Oncology, Fox Chase Cancer Center, discusses the results of the CheckMate-227 trial in non–small cell lung cancer.

Shilpa Gupta, MD, assistant professor of medicine, Hematology/Oncology and Transplantation Division, University of Minnesota, discusses the phase Ib/II studies of pembrolizumab with bevacizumab for the treatment of patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma.

Anne Chiang, MD, PhD, discusses recent developments with immunotherapy and the overall outlook for the treatment landscape of small cell lung cancer.

The combination of nivolumab and low-dose ipilimumab reduced the risk of progression or death by 52% compared with standard platinum doublet chemotherapy for patients with metastatic PD-L1–negative, tumor mutation burden-high non–small cell lung cancer.

The combination of atezolizumab, bevacizumab, carboplatin, and paclitaxel educed the risk of death by 22% compared with bevacizumab and chemotherapy in patients with advanced wild-type non-squamous non–small cell lung cancer.

Robert M. Jotte, MD, PhD, medical director and co-chair, USON Thoracic Committee, Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers, discusses the phase III findings of the IMpower131 trial, which looked at the addition of atezolizumab (Tecentriq) to frontline carboplatin and nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) in patients with advanced squamous non

Mario Sznol, MD, professor of medicine, co-director, Yale SPORE in Skin Cancer, Yale Cancer Center, discusses immunotherapy combinations in renal cell carcinoma.

Two separate early-phase clinical trials exploring daratumumab in combination with either a PD-1 inhibitor for multiple myeloma or a PD-L1 inhibitor for non–small cell lung cancer were terminated following a planned interim analysis.

Durvalumab significantly improved overall survival versus placebo when used as a sequential treatment in patients with locally-advanced, unresectable non–small cell lung cancer who had not progressed following standard chemoradiotherapy, according to updated findings from the phase III PACIFIC trial.

IMCgp100, a novel immune-based treatment, demonstrated a 1-year survival rate of 73% for patients with heavily pretreated, which is nearly double the historical expectations for patients with the disease.

Novel combination regimens anchored by pembrolizumab (Keytruda), atezolizumab (Tecentriq), or nivolumab (Opdivo) are opening the door to new options and an opportunity to personalize therapy in non–small cell lung cancer.

The FDA has issued a drug safety notification warning against the use of frontline single-agent immune checkpoint inhibition for patients with PD-L1–low expressing platinum-eligible urothelial carcinoma.

In March, the President’s Cancer Panel issued a report acknowledging the financial toxicity associated with cancer care across the spectrum of treatments and suggesting potential remedies.

The quest continues to identify a predictive biomarker of response to more precisely treat patients with checkpoint inhibitors that, while markedly beneficial to some patients, are not without their own costs and associated immune-related adverse effects.