Oral Presentation Clinical Oncology Society of Australia Annual Scientific Meeting 2017

Update on current lung cancer trials (#64)

Ben Solomon 1
  1. Department of Medical Oncology, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, East Melbourne, Vic, Australia

 The advent of immunotherapies, in particular checkpoint inhibitors targeting the programmed cell death protein-1 (PD1/PD-L1), has resulted in new standards of care for patients with non-small cell lung cancer. These agents have proved to be well tolerated and to result in rapid and durable responses albeit in a subset of patients. Phase III studies with the PD-1 inhibitors nivolumab and pembrolizumab as well as the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab have demonstrated superiority over docetaxel in previously treated NSCLC patients. A phase III study with pembrolizumab demonstrated superiority over platinum doublet chemotherapy in previously untreated patients whose tumours are PD-L1 positive (TPS>50%). Ongoing studies are exploring combinations of PD1/PD-L1 inhibitors with chemotherapy, radiotherapy and with other immune modulators including cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen 4 (CTLA4) and Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase 1 (IDO1) inhibitors both in advanced disease and also early stage disease.