Immuno-Oncology

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.

Results from a safety, tolerability, and dose escalation phase Ib/II study involving intratumoral SD-101 and pembrolizumab (Keytruda) have demonstrated that the combination was well-tolerated with no dose-limiting toxicities.

The combination of atezolizumab and cobimetinib may lead to a higher overall response and a longer progression-free survival than either agent alone in patients with metastatic melanoma.

Christian Blank, MD, PhD, Netherlands Cancer Institute, discusses some of the early findings from the OpACIN trial testing a combination of ipilimumab and nivolumab in the neoadjuvant and adjuvant setting for patients with stage III melanoma.

Neoadjuvant therapy with the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab is plausible and effective but can induce a high level of adverse events calling for further research into better tolerated dosing schemes.

Ryan Sullivan, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses how best to treat patients with melanoma who have the BRAF mutation.

The addition of the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab to the MEK inhibitor cobimetinib and the BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib induced a high response rate for patients with BRAF-mutant unresectable melanoma.

With immunotherapy agents showing significant promise in bladder cancer, the potential for these agents in the neoadjuvant setting is wide open.

Following a long drought in the development of bladder cancer treatments, the field is now poised to benefit from a series of rapid advances ushered in by highly effective immunotherapies.

A window of opportunity exists in which some patients with non–muscle-invasive bladder cancer could benefit from trying novel second-line therapies prior to surgery.

Looking ahead to 2020, most participants on an expert panel projected that immunotherapy will be critical to optimizing outcomes in the adjuvant setting for patients with renal cell carcinoma.

Elizabeth Plimack, MD, director of Genitourinary Clinical Research at Fox Chase Cancer Center, discusses updated findings from the CheckMate-025 trial, which compared the efficacy of nivolumab (Opdivo) with everolimus (Afinitor) in patients with renal cell carcinoma.

Nicholas G. Cost, MD, assistant professor, Surgery-Urology, Department of Pediatric Urology/ Urologic Oncology, University of Colorado Denver, discusses a clinical trial exploring pembrolizumab (Keytruda) plus axitinib (Inlyta) in patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

Jason Luke, MD, an assistant professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago Medicine, discusses the role for immunotherapy and targeted agents in patients with BRAF-positive melanoma.