Immuno-Oncology

The FDA has granted an accelerated approval to pembrolizumab as a treatment for patients with recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma following progression on a platinum-based chemotherapy.

Robert Ferris, MD, PhD, vice chair for Clinical Operations, associate director for Translational Research, and coleader of the Cancer Immunology Program at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, discusses the impact of the FDA approval of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for the treatment of patients with head and neck cancer.

Paul A. Bunn Jr, MD, Distinguished Professor, Division of Medical Oncology/University of Colorado, James Dudley Chair in Lung Cancer Research, University of Colorado Denver, 2014 Giant of Cancer Care in Lung Cancer, discusses the phase III results from CheckMate-026, which explored nivolumab (Opdivo) monotherapy in treatment-naïve patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer.

Monotherapy with nivolumab failed to improve progression-free survival compared with physician's choice of combination chemotherapy for patients with PD-L1–positive non–small cell lung cancer.

Edward B Garon, MD, director, Thoracic Oncology, Jonnson Comprehensive Cancer Center, UCLA, discusses the evolution of immunotherapy for the treatment of patients with non–small cell lung cancer.

New classes of immunotherapies emerging in lung cancer are building on previous success with PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors.

Alexander I. Sankin, MD, discusses how bladder cancer researchers are looking beyond PD-L1 and CTLA-4 to HHLA2, a potentially druggable new checkpoint target.

The European Commission has approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda) as a treatment for patients with locally advanced or metastatic PD-L1–positive non–small cell lung cancer following at least 1 chemotherapy regimen.

There is some evidence that relatively short treatment courses might also be appropriate for other checkpoint inhibitors approved for treating some cancers, but the data are fairly sparse.

Suzanne L. Topalian, MD, director, Melanoma Program, professor of Surgery, Johns Hopkins Medicine, discusses how the use of PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors in multiple tumor types has dramatically evolved over the last 4 years.

Hendrik-Tobias Arkenau, MD, PhD, founding medical director, executive medical director, Sarah Cannon Research Institute UK, discusses immunotherapy advancements on the horizon in the field of gastric cancer.

The wide variability in clinical outcomes among patients undergoing anti–PD-1/PD-L1 immunotherapy has increased interest in finding biomarkers that predict response.