Vivek Subbiah, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, talks about innovative design of clinical studies that may help demonstrate clinical benefit in precision medicine and advance treatment to deliver the right intervention to the right patient at the right time (Abstract DC06).
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).
Gautam Mehta, MD, of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, discusses how accelerated approval of potentially life-saving cancer therapies has been applied in precision oncology. Although “fast-tracking” drugs presents opportunities and challenges, one possible measure of the program’s success is the fact that, to date, no solid tumor accelerated-approval indications have been withdrawn (Abstract DC06).
John B.A.G. Haanen, MD, PhD, of the Netherlands Cancer Institute, discusses findings from a phase I study designed to test the safety and efficacy of the CARVac (CAR-T cell-amplifying RNA vaccine) strategy to overcome poor CAR T-cell stimulation and responses in patients with CLDN6-positive advanced solid tumors. Men with testicular cancer in particular showed encouraging responses. Overall, some patients showed long-term CAR T-cell persistence more than 150 days post infusion. Partial responses seemed to deepen further over time (Abstract CT002).
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).
Alana L. Welm, PhD, of the University of Utah Huntsman Cancer Institute, discusses her findings of a new pathway that regulates the antitumor immune response during metastatic outgrowth. Interfering with a particular isoform of RON kinase may cause metastatic tumors to be swarmed by T cells and killed, suggesting that new approaches to targeting this kinase may be achievable in the near future (Abstract SY32).
