Dr. Sabari on Future of Immunotherapy in SCLC

Joshua Sabari, MD, medical oncology fellow, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the future that immunotherapy has in the field of small cell lung cancer (SCLC).

The biomarker story regarding immunotherapy is still playing out in SCLC, Sabari explains. Ongoing research will determine what role this type of treatment will actually have. What is interesting about data with immunotherapy, he adds, is that responses to such treatment is not correlated with PD-1/PD-L1 expression. This is something that needs to be further studied and clarified because it complicates the development and design of clinical trials.

Sabari hopes that immunotherapy does end up having positive outcomes in this patient population so that it provides another tool in the armamentarium. However, there needs to be more understanding of the activity in the disease.