Immuno-Oncology

Small cell lung cancer is very sensitive to chemotherapy, but immunotherapy offers another line of treatment for when chemotherapy stops working.

The COVID-19 pandemic can affect every stage of the cancer experience: from diagnosis to adverse event management.

Locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer traditionally had high relapse rates after initial treatment. Now durvalumab may bring better survival rates to these patients.

There is a lot of work that needs to be done to determine the optimal use for immunotherapy in patients with sarcoma.

Bradley McGregor, MD, discusses some of the recent approaches that have emerged in bladder cancer and renal cell carcinoma, as well as anticipated developments in each field.

When it comes to immunotherapy-related adverse events, patients with lung cancer tend to have higher rates of pneumonitis than other cancer types, one nurse explains.

Treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors did not increase the risk of mortality in patients with COVID-19 and cancer.

During his presentation, Michael A. Postow, MD, briefly reviewed the latest updates with immunotherapy and other targeted treatments in melanoma reported during the 2020 ASCO Virtual Scientific Program.

The 4-drug combination of atezolizumab (Tecentriq), bevacizumab (Avastin), carboplatin, and paclitaxel (ABCP) improved survival while maintaining good health-related quality of life (QOL) in patients with nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer .

Immunotherapy should be continued for up to 2 years in patients with metastatic lung cancer who are responding to the treatment, unless they experience disease progression or excessive toxicity, according to Gilberto de Lima Lopes, MD.

Pembrolizumab combined with trastuzumab and chemotherapy demonstrated clinical activity in patients with HER2-positive metastatic esophagogastric cancer.

The addition of immunotherapy to the triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) armamentarium has led to a paradigm shift and sparked an abundance of research with immuno-oncology (IO) drugs in new combinations and settings, explained Hope S. Rugo, MD.

The FDA approved nivolumab (Opdivo) plus ipilimumab (Yervoy) for the frontline treatment of patients with metastatic or recurrent non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with no EGFR or ALK aberrations.

Over the last few weeks, the FDA was busy reviewing and approving new cancer treatments.

Although the emergence of more targeted and immunotherapies continues to expand the melanoma treatment paradigm, surgery remains an important tool in the management of these patients, according to Omid Hamid, MD.

Bristol Myers Squibb recently announced that the FDA granted priority review to nivolumab plus ipilimumab in combination with chemotherapy as a first-line treatment for metastatic NSCLC.

The FDA approved durvalumab (Imfinzi) plus standard-of-care (SoC) chemotherapies etoposide with either carboplatin or cisplatin (platinum-etoposide) for the treatment of adults with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC).

There are multiple factors in making "cold" breast cancer tumors "hot," meaning that they respond to chemotherapy, explained Hope S. Rugo, MD, FASCO, director of Breast Oncology and Clinical Trials Education at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center.

After nearly 4 decades of stagnation, the advent of immunotherapy has transformed the frontline treatment paradigm for patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC). However, biomarkers are needed to better inform which patients are most likely to respond to checkpoint inhibitors, said Jason Niu, MD, PhD.

There are concerns when a patient undergoes a cytoreductive nephrectomy after immunotherapy or targeted therapy that nurses should be aware of.

The frontline combination of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and chemotherapy significantly improved progression-free survival (PFS) compared with chemotherapy alone in patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) whose tumors expressed PD-L1 (combined positive score [CPS] ≥10), meeting one of the dual primary endpoints of the phase III KEYNOTE-355 trial.

Recent years have brought landmark changes to the treatment of advanced lung cancer, but there is still more work to be done.

Nearly 1 year following the first checkpoint inhibitor approval in advanced triple-negative breast cancer, additional immunotherapeutic agents are poised to enter the field, according to Rita Nanda, MD.

Do a head-to-toe scan when discussing adverse events for melanoma treatment, says a nurse practitioner.

The future of melanoma treatment will include many combinations, explained Mario Sznol, MD, professor of medicine and co-leader of cancer immunology at the Yale Cancer Center.

The FDA accepted and granted priority review to the supplemental biologics license application for nivolumab in combination with ipilimumab for the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic or recurrent non-small cell lung cancer.

In this special edition podcast, we spoke with both a physician and a nurse about the management of immune-related adverse events in patients with melanoma.