Immuno-Oncology

Theodore H. Welling, MD, associate professor of surgery, director of the Liver Tumor Program at Perlmutter Cancer Center of NYU Langone Medical Center, discusses how immunotherapy agents will eventually fit into the paradigm of hepatocellular carcinoma. (HCC).

Theodore H. Welling, MD, shares insight on the top presentations at the ILCA meeting, and how he believes the future will look for the treatment of HCC.

Robert Montal, MD, visiting researcher, Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital, discusses advancements regarding systemic therapies in the field of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

PROSTVAC with or without GM-CSF was deemed unlikely to demonstrate an improvement in overall survival compared with placebo for patients with asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.

Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) reduced the risk of death compared with standard of care therapy in patients with relapsed/metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, but the difference fell just shy of statistical significance.

Nivolumab (Opdivo) may represent a new standard option for adjuvant therapy for patients with resected stage IIIB/C and IV melanoma, whether or not they have a BRAF mutation. In a comparison with current standard high-dose ipilimumab (Yervoy), nivolumab demonstrated a significant improvement in relapse-free survival.

Omid Hamid, MD, director of the melanoma center at the Angeles Clinic & Research Institute in Los Angeles, discusses the phase III results of the ECHO-202/KEYNOTE-037 trial, which explored the IDO inhibitor epacadostat plus pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in patients with advanced melanoma.

Lenvatinib (Lenvima) combined with pembrolizumab (Keytruda) demonstrated promising antitumor activity in patients with metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma.

Mature results from the phase III KEYNOTE-045 study presented at the 2017 ESMO Congress demonstrated that overall survival with pembrolizumab (Keytruda) continued to improve compared to chemotherapy in patients with recurrent, advanced urothelial carcinoma.

Two doses of nivolumab given about 1 month prior to surgery are well tolerated and reduces tumor size in about half of patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck.

Nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) monotherapy has efficacy in patients with pretreated advanced nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer that is not improved by the addition of CC-486.

A liquid biopsy that measures tumor mutational burden showed promise as an aid for predicting benefit in patients with non-small cell lung cancer treated with a checkpoint inhibitor.