Practice Update: Oncology

CONFERENCE COVERAGE 10

European Lung Cancer Conference 2017 5–8 MAY 2017 • GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

Exciting developments in lung cancer, particularly in immunotherapy, took centre stage at the European Lung Cancer Conference 2017. Among these were important new data on the activity of anti- PD-L1 antibodies in the first-line treatment of squamous NSCLC. The PracticeUpdate Editorial Team reports.

Patients with NSCLC respond best to salvage chemotherapy when pretreated with PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors Patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer who require salvage chemotherapy are 30% more likely to achieve a partial response when pretreated with a programmed death-1(PD-1)/PD-ligand 1 (L1) checkpoint inhibitor than those not pretreated with the medication, report preliminary findings of a retrospective analysis. S acha Rothschild, MD, PhD, of University Hospital Basel, Switzerland, said that these preliminary findings could poten- tially open the door to a newway of sequencing cancer therapy. PD-L1 expression as front-line therapy.” He continued, “It is still unclear how to treat patients who do not respond to immune check- point inhibitors or who progress after initially responding to these agents. The activity of con- ventional chemotherapy in this setting has not yet been investigated. These results are good news for patients who progress after immu- notherapy and are still fit enough to receive further palliative therapy.” Eighty-two patients with stage 4 non-small-cell He said, “Our results are of utmost importance for patients with non-small-cell lung cancer. Checkpoint inhibitors are the standard of care for patients with non-small-cell lung cancer in the second-line setting after chemotherapy and are used for a subset of patients with high

PRACTICEUPDATE ONCOLOGY