Dr. Herbst on Immunotherapy Agents in Lung Cancer

Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, a professor of medicine at the Yale Cancer Center and chief of medical oncology at Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven in Connecticut, discusses the use of immunotherapy agents to treat patients with lung cancer.

Herbst says that immunotherapy agents are showing a 20% response rate across the board in lung cancer, though response rate is not the only factor to consider. When the immune system is targeted, physicians often see slowed tumor growth and durable progression-free survival.

Recent studies of nivolumab, which blocks PD-1, showed a 2-year survival of over 20% of patients with lung cancer. Herbst says physicians are eagerly awaiting results from a phase III trial comparing docetaxel to nivolumab in squamous and non-squamous tumors.