Dr. Konstantinopoulos on Immunotherapy in Gynecologic Cancers

Panagiotis A. Konstantinopoulos, MD, director, Translational Research, Gynecologic Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, associate professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, discusses the role of immunotherapy in the treatment of gynecologic cancers.

Although immunotherapy has not made much headway in this space overall, there are 2 types of gynecologic malignancies for which there have been FDA approved agents, namely checkpoint inhibitors. In endometrial cancer, about 28% of tumors express microsatellite instability (MSI), and a tumor agnostic has been approved by the FDA for pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for use in gynecologic cancers that express MSI. This is very applicable for patients with endometrial cancer who relapse on standard chemotherapy, Konstantinopoulos notes.

Pembrolizumab is also FDA approved for the treatment of patients with cervical cancer, specifically those who have a combined tumor proportion score of at least 1. This score takes into account PD-L1 expression in the tumor cells as well as the immune cells.