Immuno-Oncology

Immunotherapy pioneers James P. Allison, PhD, and Tasuku Honjo, MD, PhD, have won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their research that eventually led to the use of immune checkpoint inhibitors to treat cancer.

Jeffrey S. Weber, MD, PhD, discusses the promise of nivolumab in this setting and a general overview of the melanoma treatment landscape.

Ongoing analyses suggest enhanced clinical benefit is derived from the combined use of entinostat and pembrolizumab in a subgroup of patients with PD-1/PD-L1–refractory non–small cell lung cancer who have high levels of peripheral blood monocytes.

The addition of atezolizumab to standard carboplatin and etoposide in the frontline setting significantly prolonged survival in patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer compared with the chemotherapy regimen alone.

Durvalumab induced a clinically meaningful improvement in overall survival compared with placebo in patients with stage III, unresectable non–small cell lung cancer who have not progressed following chemoradiotherapy.

The addition of atezolizumab to carboplatin/cisplatin in the first-line setting and to pemetrexed as maintenance therapy significantly improved progression free survival in patients with stage IV nonsquamous NSCLC.

Wade T. Iams, MD, and Erin A. Gillaspie, MD, MPH, discuss the impact that immunotherapy has had on the treatment of patients with early-stage non–small cell lung cancer.

Alexander M. M. Eggermont, MD, PhD, director general of Gustave Roussy Cancer Campus Grand Paris in Villejuif, France, discusses the impact of pembrolizumab in melanoma.

Robert Ferris, MD, PhD, vice chair for Clinical Operations, associate director for Translational Research, and co-leader of the Cancer Immunology Program at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute discusses the significance of the CheckMate-041 trial for patients with head and neck cancer.

Paul A. Bunn Jr, MD, distinguished professor, Division of Medical Oncology, James Dudley Chair in Lung Cancer Research, University of Colorado Denver, 2014 Giant of Cancer Care in Lung Cancer, discusses the treatment of patients with early-stage non–small cell lung cancer.

Matthew Powell, MD, discusses the promise of immunotherapy in ovarian cancer despite its challenges.

Parminder Singh, MD, hematologist/oncologist, Mayo Clinic, discusses the evolving role of chemotherapy in the treatment of bladder cancer.

Angeles Alvarez Secord, MD, gynecologic cancers specialist, Duke Cancer Center, discusses the growing potential for personalized treatment in ovarian cancer.

Hyung L. Kim, MD, Medallion Group Chair in Urology, co-medical director of the Urologic Oncology Center, associate director, Surgical Research in the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, discusses the potential combination of immunotherapy and tyrosine kinase inhibitors in metastatic renal cell carcinoma.

The FDA has granted a priority review designation to single-agent pembrolizumab for the frontline treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic nonsquamous or squamous non–small cell lung cancer with PD-L1 expression ≥1% and no EGFR or ALK genomic tumor aberrations.

Thai H. Ho, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine, Mayo Clinic, discusses the management of immune-related adverse events in the treatment of kidney cancer.

Combining the PD-L1 inhibitor avelumab with the VEGF inhibitor axitinib significantly improved progression-free survival compared with sunitinib in treatment-naïve patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma, according to findings from the phase III JAVELIN Renal 101 study.

Richard D. Hall, MD, recaps updates from the 2018 AACR Annual Meeting and the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting in non–small cell lung cancer.

Shilpa Gupta, MD, assistant professor of medicine, Hematology/Oncology and Transplantation Division, University of Minnesota, discusses combination immunotherapy in renal cell carcinoma.

Robert A. Figlin, MD, director, Division of Hematology/Oncology, professor of biomedical sciences and medicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, discusses the future of kidney cancer treatment.

Padmanee Sharma, MD, PhD, shares her insight on the current state of immunotherapy in the treatment of patients with genitourinary cancers.

The European Commission has approved frontline pembrolizumab for use in combination with standard chemotherapy for patients with metastatic nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer without EGFR or ALK mutations.

Benjamin P. Levy, MD, discusses established and emerging biomarkers that could have predictive value with immunotherapy.

Josephine L. Feliciano, MD, discusses the role of immunotherapy and the potential of targeted agents in small cell lung cancer.

Peter J. Van Veldhuizen, MD, hematologist/oncologist, Sarah Cannon Research Institute, discusses frontline immunotherapy for the treatment of patients with kidney cancer.