Immunotherapy in ES-SCLC and advanced NSCLC

Dr Eleni Xenophontos, a medical oncologist and clinical research physician at the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) in Brussels, kindly summarised the recent updates on immunotherapy presented at WCLC.

In her presentation, she discussed the five-year survival data of patients with extensive stage small cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC) who were treated with atezolizumab in the IMpower133 study. Additionally, she highlighted the ETER701 study that investigated anlotinib in combination with chemotherapy as a first-line therapy for ES-SCLC and the RATIONALE-312 phase 3 study that evaluated first-line chemotherapy with tislelizumab. Finally, she concluded this part of the presentation with the results of a phase I dose escalation trial of the delta-like ligand 3 (DLL3)/CD3 IgG-like T cell engager BI 764532 in patients with DLL3+ tumours.

Dr Xenophontos presented two trials for advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Unfortunately, the IMpower151 study with atezolizumab, bevacizumab, and chemotherapy for first-line metastatic, nonsquamous NSCLC, and the ILLUMINATE study, evaluating durvalumab-tremelimumab and chemotherapy in EGFR mutant NSCLC following progression on EGFR inhibitors, did not meet their primary endpoint. However, the ASTRUM-004, a phase 3 study of serplulimab plus chemotherapy as first-line treatment for squamous NSCLC, showed promising results. Dr Xenophontos concluded with new data evaluating an STK11 phenotype classifier, which serves as a broader measure of STK11/LKB1 inactivation to better distinguish patients unlikely to benefit from PD-(L)1 inhibition.

With the educational support of: