Wade Iams, MD, is the director of Lung Cancer Research at Tennessee Oncology in Nashville.
Panelists discuss how to manage patients who cannot proceed to surgery after neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy by pivoting to definitive concurrent chemoradiation with reduced-dose chemotherapy, while emphasizing the need to distinguish true progression from inflammatory changes.
Panelists discuss how real-world data from the Flatiron Health database revealed that surgical completion rates after neoadjuvant therapy are lower in community practice (65%) compared with clinical trials, particularly for patients with poor performance status or more advanced stage disease.
Panelists discuss how surgeons evaluate candidates for neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy by emphasizing that all patients with stage II and III disease should be considered regardless of PD-L1 or mutation status, while highlighting the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration in treatment decisions.
Panelists discuss how the CheckMate 77T perioperative trial updates showed that even patients receiving fewer than 4 cycles of neoadjuvant therapy still benefited, and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) clearance serves as an independent biomarker for predicting outcomes regardless of pathologic response status.
Panelists discuss how the CheckMate 816 overall survival data presented at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting demonstrated a significant survival benefit with neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy, particularly in patients with higher PD-L1 expression and those achieving pathologic complete responses (pCRs).
Panelists discuss how the standard of care for resectable early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has evolved from adjuvant chemotherapy alone to neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy and perioperative approaches that combine preoperative treatment with continued immunotherapy after surgery.
