Immuno-Oncology

Tim F. Greten, MD, senior investigator thoracic and gastrointestinal oncology branch, head, gastrointestinal malignancy section, National Cancer Institute (NCI), discusses the potential for immunotherapy in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

The use of immunotherapy as a treatment for cancer is progressively increasing with a flood of recent approvals for immune checkpoint inhibitors directed against CTLA-4 and PD-1.

Pembrolizumab monotherapy reduced the risk of death by 27% compared with chemotherapy for patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma whose disease progressed after prior treatment.

The combination of lirilumab and nivolumab resulted in an objective response rate of 24.1% in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck.

Anne Chiang, MD, PhD, professor and thoracic oncologist at Yale Cancer Center, discusses molecular testing in lung cancer and how it affects treatment decisions.

Joaquim Bellmunt, MD, PhD, attending physician of Solid Tumor Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses findings from the phase III KEYNOTE-045 study, which compared second- or third-line pembrolizumab with investigator-choice chemotherapy as a treatment for patients with metastatic or locally advanced, unresectable urothelial carcinoma.

Everett Vokes, MD, John E. Ultmann Professor of Medicine and Radiation Oncology, physician-in-chief, University of Chicago Medical Center, chair, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago Medicine, discusses the FDA approvals of the PD-L1 inhibitors nivolumab (Opdivo) and pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for the treatment of patients with head and neck cancer.

Nivolumab (Opdivo) may be the only checkpoint inhibitor that is approved by the FDA as a treatment of patients with Hodgkin lymphoma, but other immunotherapies—alone and in combination with other novel agents—are emerging in other indications.

Patrick M. Forde, MBBCh, assistant professor of oncology, Johns Hopkins Hospital, discusses the CheckMate-026 study, which demonstrated that first-line therapy with nivolumab failed to improve progression-free survival (PFS) in PD-L1–positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) compared with standard chemotherapy.

The FDA has approved nivolumab for patients with metastatic or recurrent squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck following progression on platinum-based therapy.

Treatment with nivolumab significantly extended overall survival compared with placebo for patients with unresectable, advanced, or recurrent gastric cancer who were refractory or intolerant to standard therapy.

Robert Ferris, MD, PhD, vice chair for Clinical Operations, associate director for Translational Research, and coleader of the Cancer Immunology Program at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, discusses the impact of the FDA approval of nivolumab (Opdivo) for the treatment of patients with recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (SCCN).

Using combination regimens in an effective manner will likely be a go-to method with immunotherapy in multiple myeloma, in an effort to induce durable responses in patients.

Maurie Markman, MD, president, Medicine and Science, Cancer Treatment Centers of America, editor-in-chief, OncologyLive, discusses the current status of immune targeting as potential treatment for patients with ovarian cancer.