Dr. Santos on Exciting Advancements in Field of Lung Cancer

Edgardo S. Santos, MD, medical oncology, internal medicine, Boca Raton Regional Hospital, discusses exciting advancements in the field of lung cancer. Santos shared this insight during the 2016 OncLive State of the Science Summit on Lung Cancer.

The landscape of the treatment of lung cancer has completely changed in the last 2 weeks with the frontline approval of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for patients who have more than 50% of PD-L1 expression on their tumor cells. That FDA approval, Santos says, recognizes the superiority of the immune checkpoint inhibitor versus standard chemotherapy for patients with adenocarcinoma as well as squamous cell carcinoma.

The approval is based on data from the phase III KEYNOTE-024 trial, in which single-agent pembrolizumab reduced the risk of death by 40% and improved progression-free survival by 4.3 months compared with doublet chemotherapy for untreated patients with advanced NSCLC with PD-L1 expression on ≥50% of cells.

When he is treating stage IV patients in the clinic, it is very gratifying for Santos to be able to discuss targeted therapy, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy. Reflecting on the current state of the science, Santos says researchers have been able to expand options for patients with treatments that have good efficacy findings and low toxicity profiles.