Dr. Kris on the Future of Immunotherapy and Targeted Therapy in Lung Cancer

Mark G. Kris, MD, a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses what the future holds for the development of immunotherapy and targeted therapy in the treatment of patients with lung cancer.

Kris says that cytotoxic chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and targeted therapy should all be considered relevant in the current treatment landscape of lung cancer. To date, there are not any data indicating that the success or failure of one treatment predicts the success or failure of another. According to Kris, patients are likely to derive benefits, in one way or another, from all of these therapies.

He firmly believes that this will remain true as the field moves forward, though he does say that the order of treatments is likely to change as patients live longer, and they may also require more treatments. In the future, he says, patients will likely receive some form of all of these treatments (immunotherapy, targeted therapy, and chemotherapy), and a physician's first choice of therapy will ideally be the one with the greatest chance of benefit for the patient.