Immuno-Oncology

The explosion of new checkpoint immunotherapy drugs has changed the paradigm of care for patients with urothelial carcinoma, the most common form of bladder cancer.

Following treatment with single-agent nivolumab (Opdivo), patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma saw improved or stable quality of life scores.

Daniel P. Petrylak, MD, professor of Medicine and Urology, Yale Cancer Center, discusses combinations with pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for patients with urothelial carcinoma.

The future of treatment for ovarian cancer may lie in immunotherapy combinations with PARP inhibitors or checkpoint inhibitors.

Simon Chowdhury, MA, MBBS, MRCP, PhD, consultant medical oncologist specializing in urological cancer, Sarah Cannon Research Institute, United Kingdom, discusses what roles pazopanib (Votrient) and pembrolizumab (Keytruda) have as monotherapy for patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

Patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma had an objective response rate of 40% and a 2-year overall survival rate of nearly 70% with the immune checkpoint combination of ipilimumab (Yervoy) and nivolumab (Opdivo), in phase I results from CheckMate-016.