Dr. Janjigian on Immunotherapy in Esophageal and Gastric Cancer

Yelena Y. Janjigian, MD, medical oncologist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the role of immunotherapy for patients with gastric and esophageal cancer.

The Flatiron Health data puts the clinical significance of immunotherapy into context for the treatment of patients with metastatic gastric and esophageal cancer. The pooled analysis compared data and matched it to patient characteristics provided in the randomized phase III ATTRACTION-2 study in Asia investigating nivolumab (Opdivo) versus placebo.

The ATTRACTION-2 study demonstrated that nivolumab led to a reduction in the risk of death by 37% compared with placebo for patients with advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) cancer following second or later-line chemotherapy. The median overall survival was 5.32 months (95% CI, 4.63-6.41) with nivolumab versus 4.14 months (95% CI, 3.42-4.86) in the placebo arm (HR, 0.63; P <.0001).

In addition, the CheckMate-032 investigated nivolumab versus nivolumab and ipilimumab (Yervoy) in combination in this patient population.