Dr. Ganti on Lung Cancer Abstracts From the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting

Apar Kishor Ganti, MD, professor of internal medicine, Division of Oncology/Hematology, University of Nebraska Medical Center, discusses lung cancer abstracts that were presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.

KEYNOTE-189 and IMpower150 received a lot of attention at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, explains Ganti. KEYNOTE-189 showed for the first time that adding pembrolizumab (Keytruda) to chemotherapy was superior to single-agent pembrolizumab in patients with advanced nonsquamous, non—small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

These patients did not have a driver mutation in EGFR or ALK, says Ganti. The study enrolled treatment-naïve patients with stage IV lung cancer and randomized them to either carboplatin and pemetrexed (Alimta) or carboplatin, pemetrexed, and pembrolizumab. Regardless of PD-L1 status, Ganti says that the addition of pembrolizumab improved overall survival (OS) compared to carboplatin and pemetrexed.

IMpower150 looked at patients with advanced nonsquamous NSCLC. Standard carboplatin, paclitaxel, and bevacizumab (Avastin) was given with or without atezolizumab (Tecentriq). There seemed to be a benefit in OS with the addition of atezolizumab to the triplet backbone, states Ganti.