Silas Inman

Axicabtagene ciloleucel elicited a 2-year overall survival rate of 51% in patients with refractory large B cell lymphoma, representing a clear plateau in the survival curve.

The anti-BCMA CAR T cell therapy bb21217 demonstrated an objective response rate of 83.3%, with a very good partial response or better rate of 75% in patients with heavily pretreated relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.

The CD3 and CD20 bispecific antibody mosunetuzumab demonstrated promising complete remission rates with tolerable toxicity for patients with relapsed/refractory B-cell indolent and aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Single-agent ibrutinib continued to demonstrate strong results after 7 years of follow-up in both the frontline and heavily pretreated, relapsed/refractory setting for patients with CLL and SLL.

Tisagenlecleucel continued to demonstrate durable objective response rates with a median of 19 months of follow-up for patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, according to updated findings from the phase II JULIET study.

Treatment with the CD19-targeted CAR T-cell therapy tisagenlecleucel demonstrated sustained rates of relapse-free survival and overall survival at 24 and 18 months for pediatric and young adult patients with relapsed or refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Future development of novel immunotherapy combinations should be based on individual patient characteristics, such as patient-level immune targets and tumor microenvironment.

The high durable response rates seen with CAR T-cell therapies have helped fill a high unmet need for patients with relapsed/refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, with questions remaining on the optimal way to use these agents following the FDA approval of 2 therapies in the past year.

The FDA has approved moxetumomab pasudotox for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory hairy cell leukemia following at least 2 prior lines of therapy.

The FDA has extended the review period for a supplemental biologics license application for atezolizumab for use in combination with bevacizumab, carboplatin, and paclitaxel for the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer.

The FDA has granted LOXO-292 a breakthrough therapy designation for the treatment of patients with RET fusion–positive non–small cell lung cancer or RET-mutant medullary thyroid cancer.

As the checkpoint inhibitors move into the frontline setting for patients with non–small cell lung cancer, the focus has been placed on the duration of therapy and what to do in the second-line setting following progression.

RET is set to join the list of ever-expanding actionable driver mutations for non–small cell lung cancer, as there are now 3 highly effective therapies in development.

The past year has witnessed an explosion in immunotherapy combinations for patients with lung cancer, accompanied by a growing knowledge of biomarkers such as PD-L1 and tumor mutation burden; however, an exact standard of care remains elusive.

Several novel targeted therapies are emerging for a growing number of driver mutations in lung cancer, with multiple targeted agents now confirmed standards of care.

Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies have quickly moved from early phase clinical trials to FDA approval for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, with research now exploring ways to shift these agents earlier in the treatment paradigm.

Treatment with the recombinant oncolytic poliovirus PVSRIPO elicited sustained a 2- and 3-year overall survival (OS) rate of 21% (95% CI, 11%-33%) for patients with recurrent grade IV malignant glioblastoma.

The combination of palbociclib (Ibrance) and fulvestrant (Faslodex) failed to improve overall survival compared with fulvestrant and placebo in the phase III PALOMA-3 trial for patients with HR-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer.

Atezolizumab alone or in combination with cobimetinib failed to show superior overall survival compared with regorafenib for patients with chemorefractory metastatic colorectal cancer.

The FDA has incorporated PD-L1 status into the labels for pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and atezolizumab (Tecentriq) for existing frontline approvals for platinum-ineligible patients with urothelial carcinoma.

Treatment with second-line ramucirumab improved median overall survival by 3.1 months compared with placebo in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma with alpha-fetoprotein levels ≥400 ng/ml.

The European Commission has approved osimertinib (Tagrisso) as a frontline treatment for patients with EGFR-mutant locally-advanced or metastatic non–small cell lung cancer.

Several studies presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting helped further refine and inform treatment strategies for the budding class of CAR T-cell therapies, with a focus on predicting adverse events and optimizing efficacy.

The combination of nivolumab and low-dose ipilimumab reduced the risk of progression or death by 52% compared with standard platinum doublet chemotherapy for patients with metastatic PD-L1–negative, tumor mutation burden-high non–small cell lung cancer.

The combination of atezolizumab, bevacizumab, carboplatin, and paclitaxel educed the risk of death by 22% compared with bevacizumab and chemotherapy in patients with advanced wild-type non-squamous non–small cell lung cancer.

Lisocabtagene maraleucel (JCAR017; liso-cel) demonstrated a durable complete remission rate of 46% at 6 months for patients with high-risk diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.

Similar efficacy with the combination of rituximab and lenalidomide coupled with a better safety profile compared with rituximab plus chemotherapy may make the chemo-free regimen a new frontline option for patients with previously untreated follicular lymphoma.

The frontline combination of ibrutinib and venetoclax demonstrated a 100% objective response rate for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, with 77% of patients testing negative for minimal residual disease in the peripheral blood after 6 cycles.

The highly-selective RET inhibitor LOXO-292 demonstrated robust clinical activity across RET-altered solid tumors, including in patients with brain metastases and the RET V804M gatekeeper mutation.

bb2121 had a median progression-free survival of 11.8 months and a median duration of response of 10.8 months for patients with relapsed/refractory heavily pretreated multiple myeloma.