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On March 21, 2022, pembrolizumab was approved for patients with advanced endometrial carcinoma that is microsatellite instability–high (MSI-H) or mismatch repair–deficient (dMMR), as determined by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved test, who have disease progression following prior...
Invited discussant of the NeoCOAST trial, Edward B. Garon, MD, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Thoracic Oncology Program at David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles, praised the study: “NeoCOAST is an impressive study that showed numerical benefit when...
Use of multiple immune pathway inhibitors appears to be superior to checkpoint inhibitor therapy alone as neoadjuvant therapy for resectable non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to the results of the phase II NeoCOAST trial presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)...
Invited study discussant of the use of ipilimumab plus nivolumab in resistant melanoma, at the AACR Annual Meeting 2022, Mario Sznol, MD, of Yale University Cancer Center, indicated that the substantial increase in progression-free survival at 6 months was not maintained. “The durable...
A sizable proportion of patients with advanced melanoma will experience disease progression on anti–PD-1 therapy, and the optimal treatment of such patients represents an unmet need. Two studies presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2022 explored separate...
Treatment with the anti–PD-1 therapy nivolumab after surgery helped reduce cancer recurrence in patients with urothelial cancer of the bladder or other sites in the urinary tract that had invaded the muscle and therefore posed a high risk for recurrence, according to clinical trial results...
A study published by Jackson et al in Cancer Discovery investigated the reasons for decreased remission rates for patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma treated with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. "CAR T-cell therapy is a promising treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, especially for...
In a study reported as a letter to the editor in The New England Journal of Medicine, Alexander M. Menzies, MD, and colleagues found that patients with metastatic melanoma who had progressive disease while receiving relatlimab/nivolumab had poor responses to anti–CTLA-4–based treatment. As noted...
Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have identified a novel strategy to reduce immune-related adverse events caused by immunotherapy by targeting the cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6). The study, published by Hailemichael et al in Cancer Cell, establishes a proof of concept ...
In a single-institution study reported in a research letter in JAMA Oncology, Kenzik et al found substantial rates of rehospitalization and emergency department visits after chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy among commercially insured patients with cancer. Study Details The study...
In a single-institution case series reported in a research letter in JAMA Oncology, Terrero et al found that the combination of ipilimumab and nivolumab was active in patients with chemotherapy-refractory metastatic pancreatic or biliary cancer with homologous recombination deficiency (HRD)...
In the phase III RATIONALE-302 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Shen et al found that the anti–PD-1 antibody tislelizumab significantly improved overall survival vs chemotherapy in the second-line treatment of patients with advanced or metastatic esophageal squamous cell...
The human epidermal growth factor (HER) family of receptors are a well-established therapeutic target. Indeed, seminal studies conducted nearly 2 decades ago identified a key association between activating mutations in the kinase domain of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR, also known as...
In a phase II trial (DESTINY-Lung01) reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Bob T. Li, MD, PhD, MPH, of the Thoracic Oncology and Early Drug Development Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and colleagues found that fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) showed...
In the single-center phase II TUXEDO-1 trial of patients with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer, fam-trastuzumab-deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) showed efficacy in patients with active brain metastases, yielding intracranial responses in 73.3% of the population and a median progression-free survival of...
Natural killer (NK) cells derived from donated umbilical cord blood, activated with a novel bispecific antibody targeting CD16A and CD30 known as AFM13, have yielded responses in patients with pretreated and refractory CD30-positive lymphoma. The overall response rate was 89%, with 53% complete...
In a phase II trial (Hoosier Cancer Research Network GU16-260) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Michael B. Atkins, MD, and colleagues found that nivolumab monotherapy was active in previously untreated patients with advanced clear cell renal carcinoma, particularly among those with...
Ongoing evaluation of novel, targeted, and immunotherapies has led to exciting advances across the array of hematologic malignancies over the past year. The availability of new treatment options, along with emerging data on novel combinations and sequencing approaches, is rapidly changing...
Poor outcomes are observed in patients with myeloma who are refractory to multiple classes of therapies, with the average patient experiencing disease progression in up to 6 months and living no longer than 6 to 15 months. Patients often rapidly cycle through regimens that use less effective or...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Thierry Facon, MD, of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Lille, and colleagues, a prespecified interim analysis of overall survival in the pivotal phase III MAIA trial has shown a significant benefit with the addition of daratumumab to...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Philippe Moreau, MD, of the University Hospital Hôtel-Dieu, Nantes, and colleagues, an interim analysis of part 2 of the phase III CASSIOPEIA trial has showed significantly prolonged progression-free survival with maintenance daratumumab vs observation...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Meletios A. Dimopoulos, MD, of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and colleagues, the phase III APOLLO trial has shown significantly improved progression-free survival with the addition of subcutaneous (SC) daratumumab to oral...
In the phase Ib/II CARTITUDE-1 trial reported in The Lancet, Jesus G. Berdeja, MD, and colleagues found that ciltacabtagene autoleucel (cilta-cel), a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy with two B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA)-targeting single-domain antibodies, produced a high rate of...
The autologous chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy tisagenlecleucel failed to improve event-free survival vs standard-of-care treatment strategies in patients with aggressive, relapsed or refractory non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), according to results of the phase III BELINDA trial,...
The moderator of the session, Laurie H. Sehn, MD, MPH, Clinical Professor at the BC Cancer Centre for Lymphoid Cancer and University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, called the results of the TRANSFORM trial “quite remarkable” and said chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has the...
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy with lisocabtagene maraleucel could prove to be the new standard-of-care treatment for patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma in the second-line setting, according to data presented at the 2021 American Society of Hematology (ASH)...
In an interim analysis of the phase II COAST trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, FACP, FASCO, and colleagues found that consolidation durvalumab in combination with the anti-CD73 antibody oleclumab or anti-NKG2A antibody monalizumab both improved objective...
In a study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Robert Motzer, MD, and colleagues found that patients with previously untreated advanced renal cell carcinoma receiving lenvatinib/pembrolizumab had similar or favorable health-related quality of life scores and prolonged time to definitive deterioration...
On May 4, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (Enhertu) for pretreated adult patients with unresectable or metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer. According to the approval, patients had to have received a prior anti-HER2–based regimen either in the...
In the Danish single-institution phase II CheckPAC study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Chen et al found that the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab plus stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) improved the clinical benefit rate vs nivolumab plus SBRT in patients with refractory...
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has made an impact on the treatment of certain blood cancers, but in clinical study, the cellular therapy has not been as successful for patients with solid tumors, due in part to the lack of tumor targets not expressed in vital tissues. In a new study ...
Immunotherapy has become a potential strategy in treating triple-negative breast cancer, though many questions remain to be answered before long-term survival is achieved by all patients. This exciting field of breast cancer research was explored at the 2022 Miami Breast Cancer Conference by...
In a meta-analysis reported in JAMA Network Open, Farooq et al found that immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy for cancer was associated with a lower risk of neurologic adverse events compared with treatment with other agents overall in randomized trials comparing immune checkpoint inhibitors with...
Recent findings with the use of sequencing technology have suggested that the gut microbiome may play a role in the treatment of cancer. A review paper published in JAMA Oncology by Liu and Shah captured the current understanding of the connection between the gut microbiome and therapeutic response ...
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has revolutionized the treatment of blood cancers, including certain leukemias, lymphomas, and multiple myeloma. However, Black and Hispanic patients were largely absent from the major clinical trials that led to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration...
Gulam A. Manji, MD, PhD, of Columbia University Medical Center, discusses phase II results on perioperative combination chemotherapy and pembrolizumab in patients with resectable gastric cancer. The combination appeared to result in many complete pathologic responses (Abstract CT009).
Lillian L. Siu, MD, of Canada’s Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, discusses biomarker-driven precision cancer medicine, the optimal sequencing of immunotherapy (IO) with standard treatments in curative settings, IO targets beyond PD-1/PD-L1 and combinatorial strategies, and next-generation adoptive cell therapies (Abstract PL06).
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Peter Schmid, MD, PhD, of Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, and colleagues, a preplanned interim analysis of the phase III KEYNOTE-522 trial has shown improved event-free survival with the addition of pembrolizumab to...
The addition of the checkpoint inhibitor tislelizumab to first-line chemotherapy significantly reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 50% and, despite a 49% crossover rate, numerically boosted overall survival in patients with recurrent or metastatic nasopharyngeal cancer, Zhang et al...
Genevieve Boland, MD, PhD, of Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, discusses targeted treatments and immunotherapies and how they have dramatically changed the landscape in melanoma. Initially used in advanced disease, these agents are now being used in local or locoregional melanoma in the adjuvant and/or neoadjuvant settings. Dr. Boland also talks about the critical importance of multidisciplinary teams to integrate the latest recommendations for patient care.
Nicolas Girard, MD, PhD, of the Institut Curie, discusses findings from the phase III CheckMate 816 trial, which is the first study with an immunotherapy-based combination to demonstrate improved event-free survival and pathologic complete response in the neoadjuvant setting for patients with resectable stage IB to IIIA non–small cell lung cancer. The results may benefit the 30% to 55% of patients whose cancer recurs after surgery (Abstract CT012).
Two presentations given at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2022 focused on promising strategies for making breakthrough immunotherapies work for more patients. Both studies report findings from clinical trials that advance a novel immunotherapy platform in...
In the French phase II BIONIKK trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Vano et al assessed outcomes of first-line treatment with nivolumab with or without ipilimumab and VEGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors given according to characteristics of molecular subgroups in patients with metastatic clear cell...
Combination immunotherapy with the anti–PD-L1 monoclonal antibody durvalumab and other novel agents outperforms durvalumab alone in the neoadjuvant setting for early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to research presented by Cascone et al at the American Association for Cancer...
A new chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell product had an acceptable safety profile and showed early signs of efficacy as a monotherapy and in combination with an mRNA vaccine in patients with solid tumors, according to preliminary data from a phase I/II clinical trial presented by Haanen et al...
Iván Márquez-Rodas, MD, PhD, of Spain’s Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, discusses final results of the phase II SPOTLIGHT203 study of systemic pembrolizumab in combination with intratumoral BO-112 for patients with advanced melanoma refractory to anti–PD-1–based therapy. The regimen achieved an overall response rate of 25% and a disease control rate of 65% (Abstract CT014).
Silvia C. Formenti, MD, of Weill Cornell Medicine, discusses research on the best way to integrate radiotherapy with immune modifiers, which might require changes in standard radiation oncology practices. Variables such as the type of treatment fields, the inclusion of draining nodal stations, the degree of exposure of circulating immune cells, the type of dose fractionation, and the timing of radiotherapy during immune checkpoint blockade all can affect the success of immunoradiotherapy combinations (Abstract SY43).
Tina Cascone, MD, PhD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the findings of the phase II NeoCOAST study, which showed that combination immunotherapy with the anti–PD-L1 monoclonal antibody durvalumab and other novel agents resulted in numerically higher major pathologic response rates than durvalumab alone in the neoadjuvant setting for patients with early-stage resectable non–small cell lung cancer. Translational results also supported combination therapies over single-agent therapy (Abstract CT011).
Ari M. VanderWalde, MD, MPH, MBioeth, of The West Clinic, discusses results from the S1616 trial involving patients with metastatic or unresectable melanoma who had primary resistance to PD-1 or PD-L1 inhibitors. Compared with ipilimumab alone, the combination of ipilimumab plus nivolumab benefited some patients: those with tumors that responded to therapy showed an increased amount of CD8+ cells. Because there is no standard treatment for metastatic melanoma after failure of PD-1 inhibitors in BRAF wild-type disease, this research may provide a viable option in the future (Abstract CT013).
A variant of the CTLA-4 gene associated with autoimmune disease was found to be more frequent in patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who experienced an exceptionally high response to anti–PD-1 immunotherapy and a higher rate of immune-related side effects than in a comparable cohort of ...