Dr. Lilenbaum on PD-L1 as a Predictive Biomarker for Immunotherapy in Lung Cancer

Rogerio C. Lilenbaum, MD, director, Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses using PD-L1 as a predictive biomarker for immunotherapy and the search for additional biomarkers in lung cancer.

PD-L1 gives a broad sense of patients who are likely to benefit from immunotherapy, explains Lilenbaum. The most important part of using predictive biomarkers for immunotherapy, according to Lilenbaum, is to estimate the magnitude of benefit rather than patient selection.

Other investigative biomarkers include tumor mutational burden (TMB), although this marker currently does not influence decisions regarding immunotherapy, he says. There may be some circumstances where TMB is useful, but it should not currently be applied to the majority of patients, according to Lilenbaum.

The search for predictive biomarkers for immunotherapy is ongoing. Identifying patients who will truly benefit from immunotherapy will make the treatment much more powerful and cost effective, Lilenbaum concludes.

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