Treating lung cancer with combination of chemotherapy, immunotherapy

Patients with newly diagnosed advanced lung cancer who received an immunotherapy drug plus standard chemotherapy lived significantly longer than those who got chemo alone, according to a new study that is expected to change the way such patients are treated.

…

The reports underscore the increasingly important first-line role that immunotherapy, which unleashes the immune system to destroy cancer cells, is taking against the deadliest cancer.

“Immunotherapy is rapidly, in combination with other treatments and on its own, dramatically changing the standard of care for lung cancer,” said Leena Gandhi, an oncologist at NYU Langone Health who led the study on the immunotherapy-chemotherapy combination, called Keynote-189. “Instead of chemo being the backbone on which to improve, immunotherapy is now the backbone on which we build.”

…

[A] randomized effectiveness study [involved] more than 600 untreated patients with advanced nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer — a common type of the disease. The patients did not have cancer-causing mutations. One group was treated only with chemo, while the other got an immunotherapy drug called Keytruda plus chemo. Some of the results had been released previously, but not specific details.

After a median follow-up time of 10.5 months, Gandhi said, the patients in the combination group were 51 percent less likely to die, compared with patients in the chemo-only arm.

Read full, original post: For advanced lung cancer, immune therapy plus chemo prolongs survival