Myriam Chalabi, MD, PhD, on Colon Cancer: New Findings on Neoadjuvant Immune Checkpoint Inhibition
ESMO Congress 2022
Myriam Chalabi, MD, PhD, of The Netherlands Cancer Institute, discusses data from the NICHE-2 study, which confirms previously reported pathologic responses to short-term neoadjuvant nivolumab plus ipilimumab in patients with locally advanced mismatch repair–deficient colon cancer. Survival data suggest neoadjuvant immunotherapy may become standard of care and allow further exploration of organ-sparing approaches. (Abstract LBA7).
The ASCO Post Staff
John B.A.G. Haanen, MD, PhD, of The Netherlands Cancer Institute, discusses recent phase III findings, which show that tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) improve progression-free survival compared with ipilimumab by 50% in patients with advanced melanoma after not responding to anti–PD-1 treatment. Around 50% of TIL-treated patients had a response, and 20% had a complete response (Abstract LBA3).
The ASCO Post Staff
Tony S.K. Mok, MD, of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, discusses two late-breaking abstracts presented at ESMO 2022: the phase II SUNRISE study, which compared sintilimab plus anlotinib vs platinum-based chemotherapy as first-line therapy in patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC); and the ORIENT-31 trial, which compared sintilimab with or without IBI305 (a bevacizumab biosimilar) plus chemotherapy in patients with EGFR-mutated nonsquamous NSCLC who experienced disease progression on EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors.
The ASCO Post Staff
Bernd Kasper, MD, PhD, of Germany’s Mannheim Cancer Center, discusses phase III data from the DeFi trial, the largest study conducted to date for patients with desmoid tumors. The trial showed that the gamma secretase inhibitor nirogacestat demonstrated improvements in all primary and secondary efficacy endpoints. Although considered benign because of their inability to metastasize, desmoid tumors can cause significant morbidity and, occasionally, mortality in patients (Abstract LBA2).
The ASCO Post Staff
Ana Oaknin, MD, PhD, of Barcelona’s Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, discusses findings from the CheckMate 358 trial, which showed that chemotherapy-free immunotherapy with nivolumab alone or in combination with ipilimumab may provide durable tumor regression with manageable toxicity in patients with recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer, regardless of tumor PD-L1 expression (Abstract 520MO).
The ASCO Post Staff
Laurence Buisseret, MD, PhD, of Belgium’s Institut Jules Bordet, discusses phase II results from the SYNERGY trial, which tested first-line chemoimmunotherapy of durvalumab, paclitaxel, and carboplatin with or without the anti-CD73 antibody oleclumab in patients with advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer. Although adding oleclumab to durvalumab with chemoimmunotherapy did not increase the clinical benefit rate at week 24, research is ongoing to better understand the mechanisms of response and resistance to this study combination (Abstract LBA17).
