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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.
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
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
CONFERENCE COVERAGE
10
PRACTICEUPDATE ONCOLOGY