Immuno-Oncology

Acting 3 months ahead of schedule, the FDA approved nivolumab for patients with nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer previously treated with platinum-based chemotherapy.

Andrea B. Apolo, MD, explains the challenges that still remain regarding toxicity and future combination therapies with avelumab, and the potential of checkpoint inhibition in urothelial carcinoma going forward.

Encouraging findings and regulatory milestones have recently been announced for the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab and the PD-L1 inhibitor avelumab as treatments for patients with metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma.

Naiyer A. Rizvi, MD, discusses the future outlook for PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint agents in non-small cell lung cancer and the potential for immunotherapy combinations.

David S. Ettinger, MD, discusses recent advancements in NSCLC, specifically with immunotherapy, and explains challenges that have stemmed from these developments.

Andrea Apolo, MD, medical oncologist at the National Cancer Institute and chief of the bladder cancer section of the Genitourinary Malignancies Branch, discusses treatment challenges for patients with refractory, metastatic urothelial carcinoma.

The FDA approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda) as a treatment for patients with pretreated advanced non­–small cell lung cancer across all histologies whose tumors express PD-L1.

The FDA has scheduled an advisory hearing to discuss the biologics license application for the immunotherapy MCNA as a treatment for patients with high-risk non-muscle invasive bladder cancer following first-line bacillus Calmette-Guérin therapy.

The FDA has granted an accelerated approval to the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab as a treatment for patients with BRAF V600 wild-type unresectable or metastatic melanoma.

Brett Miles, MD, DDS, discusses the potential of ADXS11-001 in HPV-associated head and neck cancer and other emerging therapies and treatment strategies.

Treatment with nivolumab reduced the risk of death by 28% compared with docetaxel for patients with previously treated nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer.

The combination of the attenuated oncolytic virus talimogene laherparepvec and the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab for unresectable melanoma has passed an early safety evaluation.

Second-line atezolizumab demonstrated significant clinical benefit in patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma who had a poor prognosis after progressing following platinum-based chemotherapy.

Inhibition of PD-L1 with atezolizumab demonstrated significant clinical efficacy as monotherapy in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer.

Paul Nghiem, MD, PhD, Michael Piepkorn Endowed Chair in Dermatology Research, professor of Dermatology/Medicine at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, University of Washington Medicine discusses a phase II trial investigating the PD-1 blockade pembrolizumab as first systemic therapy in patients with advanced Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC).

Two strategies of sequential immunotherapy for advanced melanoma showed similar safety and tolerability but substantially different efficacy.

More than a fifth of patients with previously treated metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma showed a measurable response when treated with the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab.

The FDA has granted a priority review designation to a supplemental biologics license application for nivolumab plus ipilimumab in previously untreated patients with advanced melanoma.

Nivolumab reduced the risk of death by 27% versus everolimus in patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma, improving overall survival by 5.4 months.

Immunotherapy expert Jeffrey Weber, MD, PhD, will join NYU Langone Medical Center's Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center as its deputy director and co-director of its melanoma program.

Immunotherapy pioneer James P. Allison, PhD, has been named the 2015 recipient of the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award by the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation.