Lung Cancer

Barcelona, Spain—The immunotherapy combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) plus ipilimumab (Yervoy) improved overall survival (OS) compared with chemotherapy as first-line treatment in patients with advanced non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and PD-L1 expression ≥1%, according to results of CheckMate 227.

Barcelona, Spain—Osimertinib (Tagrisso), a third-generation EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), extended overall survival (OS) compared with older TKI EGFR inhibitors, including gefitinib (Iressa) or erlotinib (Tarceva), as first-line treatment for patients with advanced non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and EGFR mutation in the phase 3 clinical trial called FLAURA.

Chicago, IL—Treatment with the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembroliz­umab (Keytruda) dramatically improved 5-year survival for patients with advanced non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) compared with expected survival in the preimmunotherapy era, according to the 5-year follow-up data from the phase 1b KEYNOTE-001 clinical trial. The study was presented at ASCO 2019 and was published simultaneously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Chicago, IL—BLU-667, a novel inhibitor of RET, elicited responses in more than 50% of patients with RET fusion–positive advanced non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to data from an ongoing phase 1 clinical trial presented at ASCO 2019.

Chicago, IL—Expanded data from an early phase 1/2 clinical trial showed that treatment with repotrectinib, an investigational tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) with potent selectivity against tumors with ROS1 rearrangement, induced a response in 9 of 11 patients with TKI-naïve, advanced non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and ROS1 fusion.

Atlanta, GA—The combination of the investigational MET inhibitor savolitinib plus the EGFR inhibitor osimertinib (Tagrisso) achieved encouraging responses in patients with MET-amplified, EGFR-positive non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and acquired, MET-driven resistance to previous therapies, with an acceptable side-effect profile. These findings represent interim results of 2 expansion cohorts of a phase 1b clinical trial presented at the 2019 American Association for Cancer Research meeting.

Atlanta, GA—Immune checkpoint inhibitors represent a tremendous advance in the treatment of several types of cancers. Although approximately 20% to 25% of patients will have durable responses with these agents, it has been challenging to find biomarkers to identify who these patients are.

San Francisco, CA—Moving PD-1 or PD-L1 inhibitors to an early line of therapy, immediately after chemoradiation, has improved survival for patients with unresectable, stage III non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC).