Immuno-Oncology

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 immunotherapy for the treatment of Merkel cell carcinoma.

Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) significantly improved overall survival compared with the standard frontline regimen of cetuximab (Erbitux) plus platinum chemotherapy and 5-FU in patients with recurrent or metastatic HNSCC.

Jessica Bauman, MD, addresses current and emerging therapeutic options for patients with BRAF, ROS1, and RET abnormalities in non–small cell lung cancer.

John A. Kosteva, MD, discusses the adoption of immunotherapy into the treatment paradigm for patients with non–small cell lung cancer.

Jeffrey S. Weber, MD, PhD, deputy director and co-director of the Melanoma Program, NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, 2016 Giant of Cancer Care® in Melanoma, discusses updated data for the Checkmate-238 trial.

Although impressive single-agent data have been seen with agents such as pembrolizumab (Keytruda) versus chemotherapy in a high–PD-L1 population, the combination of PD-L1 inhibitors and chemotherapy may prove to be beneficial in a broader group of patients.

David A. Reardon, MD, clinical director, Center for Neuro-Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and bevacizumab (Avastin) for the treatment of patients with recurrent PD-L1–positive glioblastoma.

Sanjiv S. Agarwala, MD, chief of medical oncology and hematology, St. Luke’s Cancer Center, professor of medicine, Temple University School of Medicine, discusses the impact of combining entinostat with pembrolizumab (Keytruda) across a number of tumor types.

Peter J. Van Veldhuizen, MD, discusses available and emerging therapies for patients with kidney cancer.

Adding atezolizumab to pemetrexed and cisplatin or carboplatin in the frontline setting reduced the risk of disease progression or death versus chemotherapy alone in patients with advanced nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer, according to findings from the phase III IMpower132 study.

Sara M. Tolaney, MD, MPH, instructor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, attending physician of medical oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses the phase Ib results of abemaciclib (Verzenio) plus pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer.

Suresh A. Ramalingam, MD, reflects on recent data in small cell lung cancer and what is on the horizon in the landscape.

H. Jack West, MD, medical director of thoracic oncology, Swedish Cancer Institute of Swedish Medical Center, discusses the latest immunotherapy findings for lung cancer treatment.

George F. Geils, Jr, MD, discussed the clinical efficacy and adverse event management techniques for pembrolizumab as a treatment for patients with classical Hodgkin lymphoma.

Matthew Galsky, MD, discusses the IMvigor130 and CheckMate-901 studies, as well as the future for chemotherapy in bladder cancer.

Liza C. Villaruz, MD, addresses the immunotherapy clinical trials that have informed the treatment of patients with NSCLC and the current state of biomarkers in the field.

The FDA has approved the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients 12 years and older with microsatellite instability-high or mismatch repair deficient metastatic colorectal cancer following progression on a fluoropyrimidine, oxaliplatin, and irinotecan.

Joshua Bauml, MD, discusses the limitations of PD-L1 and tumor mutational burden as immunotherapy biomarkers in non–small cell lung cancer and emerging biomarkers showing promise in the field.

Petros Grivas, MD, PhD, discusses ongoing clinical trials exploring novel approaches with the potential to change practice in advanced bladder cancer.

Brian I. Rini, MD, discusses atezolizumab plus bevacizumab as an effective frontline combination in renal cell carcinoma, as well as patient reported outcomes with the regimen.

Sumanta Kumar Pal, MD, sheds light on the latest frontline therapeutic options for patients with mRCC and other advancements on the horizon.

Toni Choueiri, MD, director, Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology, director, Kidney Cancer Center, Jerome and Nancy Kohlberg Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses checkpoint inhibitors in renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

Marina Chiara Garassino, MD, reflects on the first-line approval of osimertinib, recent data with durvalumab, and the promise for combination chemoimmunotherapy in patients with non–small cell lung cancer.

Recently, immuno-oncologists have turned their attention to the role of the second arm of the immune response—the more rough-and-ready innate arm, which serves as the body’s frontline defense against pathogenic invaders and, it seems, cancer.

The FDA has granted a priority review designation to a supplemental biologics license application for first-line pembrolizumab for use in combination with carboplatin/paclitaxel or nab-paclitaxel for the treatment of patients with metastatic squamous non–small cell lung cancer, regardless of PD-L1 expression.