Immuno-Oncology

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.

In less than 10 years, immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have dramatically altered the treatment landscape for patients with metastatic melanoma, helping to drive an improvement in 5-year survival rates from historical levels of less than 10% to more than 50% with some regimens.

Timothy Yap, MBBS, PhD, FRCP, discusses the rationale for the ongoing phase 1b/2 SEASTAR trial in advanced solid tumors.

In our exclusive interview, Vivek Subbiah, MD, discusses the FDA approval of pembrolizumab in tumor mutational burden–high solid tumors, shares the “transformative importance” of the regulatory decision, and speaks to the controversy surrounding the approval.

The combination of nivolumab plus chemotherapy resulted in a statistically significant improvement in pathologic complete response when used as neoadjuvant treatment in patients with resectable non–small cell lung cancer, meeting the primary end point of the phase 3 CheckMate-816 trial.

Scott Tykodi, MD, PhD, discusses the FRACTION-RCC study and other novel combinations under exploration for heavily pretreated patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma.