Dr. Herbst on the Benefit of Targeting PD-1/PD-L1

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 unique benefit of targeting the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway in lung cancer.

Herbst says that some older vaccines in lung cancer may have been able to benefit patients if they were used with an immune checkpoint inhibitor or an adoptive T cell therapy.

The PD-1/PD-L1 is a prevalent pathway involved in immune regulation. Researchers are seeing mutations presented at the surface of a tumor cell are activating T cells, which then get checked by natural checkpoints in the body. This block must be relieved.

This inhibition of the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway has shown benefit in other cancers as well as lung cancer, Herbst says.