The FDA recently granted accelerated approval for pembrolizumab in combination with pemetrexed and carboplatin for the treatment of patients with previously untreated metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (non-squamous). This is the first approval to combine immunotherapy with chemotherapy in lung cancer. The trial compared standard chemotherapy to pembrolizumab along with standard chemotherapy in patients that… Read more »
In May, the FDA approved pembrolizumab in any unresectable or metastatic tumor with mismatch repair deficiency or microsatellite instability. These are terms to describe mutations found in some tumors that prevent your body’s cells from repairing errors in DNA copy. This leads to instability and tumor growth. The most common tumor types where we find… Read more »
Immunotherapy 2.0 named clinical advance of the year in cancer care. A lot of our updates are about new indications for immunotherapy to treat many types of cancer. This past year, new indications were approved for treatment in melanoma, bladder cancer, head and neck cancer, lung cancer and kidney cancer. While immunotherapy does not work… Read more »
The KEYNOTE-024 trial was recently published that will be a game-changer for the first-line treatment of metastatic non-small cell lung cancer. In a certain subset of patients with PD-L1 expression over 50% (PD-L1 is a marker of immune activity within the tumor), patients were randomized to receive either standard chemotherapy or pembrolizumab (an immune therapy… Read more »
The American Society of Clinical Oncology named immunotherapy as the “Advance of the year”. There were many exciting developments, as you can see from some of our previous posts. There have also been exciting trials with immune therapy in bladder cancer, Hodgkin disease, liver cancer and head and neck cancer. These are especially exciting because… Read more »
