Immuno-Oncology

Joshua Brody, MD, discusses the role of immunotherapy in Hodgkin lymphoma.

Jeffrey S. Weber, MD, PhD, discusses the toxicities associated with immunotherapy in lung cancer.

Checkpoint inhibitors have failed to improve progression-free survival and overall survival as second-line therapy and maintenance therapy in small cell lung cancer, but this class of agents continue to show encouraging activity worthy of a paradigm shift up front.

Mario Sznol, MD, discusses the critical importance of being aware of the immune-related toxicities that could arise when treating patients with cancer, along with the best ways to manage them.

December 11, 2020 - The European Medicine Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use has adopted a positive opinion for pembrolizumab monotherapy for the frontline treatment of adult patients with metastatic microsatellite instability–high or mismatch repair deficient colorectal cancer.

With the shift away from chemoimmunotherapy, and the adoption of novel combinations, as well as cellular therapy, the MCL treatment landscape has entered a new era. Looking forward, minimal residual disease is bound to play a critical role in terms of guiding treatment selection.

December 4, 2020 — Adjuvant nivolumab demonstrated clinically meaningful improvements in relapse-free survival, overall survival, and distant metastasis-free survival vs placebo in patients with high-risk resected melanoma, even after accounting for disease stage and post-recurrence survival, supporting the use of the anti–PD-1 antibody as a standard adjuvant therapy.

Joshua Reuss, MD, discusses the lung cancer armamentarium, the role of immunotherapy combinations, and the significance of biomarkers.

Data from completed studies evaluating immunotherapy in lung cancer alone or in combination with chemotherapy show that a breakdown of populations by PD-L1 status and additional considerations such as toxicity profiles should guide treatment decisions.

November 17, 2020 - AV-GBM-1, a personalized cancer vaccine, demonstrated an improvement in progression-free survival in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma.

November 14, 2020 - A novel combination comprised of the TKI cabozantinib plus the PD-1 inhibitor nivolumab and the CTLA-4 inhibitor ipilimumab is under exploration in treatment-naïve patients with intermediate or poor risk advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma in the phase 3 COSMIC-313 trial.

November 13, 2020 - The FDA has granted an accelerated approval to pembrolizumab for use in combination with chemotherapy in the treatment of patients with locally recurrent unresectable or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer whose tumors express PD-L1 as determined by an FDA-approved test.

Tian Zhang, MD, discusses the combination of ieramilimab and spartalizumab in advanced malignancies.

November 12, 2020 - The first-in-class, next-generation, DuoBody-PD-L1×4-1BB bispecific antibody GEN1046 demonstrated promising early activity and an acceptable safety profile in in patients with advanced solid tumors.

November 12, 2020 - In an effort to further improve outcomes without sacrificing tolerability, the combination of cabozantinib with pembrolizumab is being evaluated in patients with advanced melanoma in a phase 1b/2 study.

The phase 3 KEYNOTE-598 trial evaluating the dual immunotherapy combination comprised of pembrolizumab and ipilimumab as frontline treatment in patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer who have a PD-L1 tumor proportion score of 50% or greater and do not harbor any EGFR or ALK aberrations has been discontinued.

Tumor mutational burden has been associated with response to immunotherapy in patients with lung cancer, but there have been various criticisms regarding the validity and routine use of this as a biomarker.

The European Commission has approved the combination of nivolumab plus ipilimumab with 2 cycles of platinum-based chemotherapy for the up-front treatment of adult patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer without a sensitizing EGFR mutation or an ALK translocation.

It was 5:00 PM on a Monday, and Andrew Pecora, MD, FACP, CPE, was just wrapping up his practice for the day when one of his nurses came to the door, asking if he could see one more patient.

Sandip P. Patel, MD, discusses the role of immunotherapy combinations in lung cancer.

Michael B. Atkins, MD, discusses the expanding role of immunotherapy in oncology.

Hossein Borghaei, DO, MS, further discusses the benefit of immunotherapy combinations, the potential of tiragolumab, and the need for better biomarkers to guide treatment in NSCLC.

Manish A. Shah, MD, FASCO, discusses key clinical trials that have evaluated the utility of pembrolizumab and nivolumab in the gastric/gastroesophageal junction cancer, and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma paradigms.

Zarnie Lwin, MBBS, FRACP, discusses the design of the phase 2 LEAP-005 trial in previously treated patients with advanced solid tumors.

FIP200 deletion was found to enhance the efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibition in patients with nonresponsive breast cancer.