Immunotherapy Moves to SCLC, But Chemotherapy Is Still a Mainstay

Even with the addition of checkpoint inhibitors to the small cell lung cancer (SCLC) space, chemotherapy is still a mainstay, as the disease is highly sensitive to it, explains Beth Sandy, MSN, CRNP, a nurse at the Abramson Cancer Center of University of Pennsylvania.

Transcription

I don't think we're ever going to see us move away from chemotherapy in small cell [lung cancer]. But, the addition of immunotherapy to it has been an improvement.

The other part of it is that even though etoposide and platinum [-based drugs] seem to have really good response rates -- they do have really good response rates -- then we see in later lines of therapy, the chemotherapy is not working as well. So it's exciting to have another drug that's available in that setting.