IMMUNOTHERAPY

Recent news stories profiling a cancer patient whose last hope rests on treatment by injections of the virus that causes AIDS may have created some misconceptions regarding a new cancer immunotherapy.

Combination therapies with agents such as indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) inhibitors may have the potential to synergize with immunotherapeutic approaches to improve immune function against tumor cells.

Peter Hammerman, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses the future treatment of squamous cell lung cancer.

Abraham Chachoua, MD, discusses some challenges of treating patients with lung cancer.

Dendreon has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, the company announced Nov. 10. Dendreon is the maker of the first FDA-approved immunotherapy for advanced prostate cancer, sipuleucel-T (Provenge).

Adding the GM-CSF agent sargramostim to the CTLA-4 inhibitor ipilimumab (Yervoy) prolonged overall survival (OS) and lowered toxicity for patients with unresectable stage III or IV melanoma.

Joshua Brody, MD, assistant professor, Icahn School of Medicine, director, Lymphoma Immunotherapy Program, Mount Sinai Hospital, discusses vaccine strategies in follicular lymphoma.

The FDA has granted a breakthrough therapy designation to pembrolizumab for the treatment of patients with NSCLC who are EGFR mutation- or ALK rearrangement-negative and whose disease has progressed on or following platinum-based chemotherapy.

The investigational chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapy CTL019 elicited complete remissions in 27 of 30 pediatric and adult patients (90%) with relapsed/refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in 2 pilot trials.

Tanios Bekaii-Saab, MD, discusses the future of immunotherapy and viral therapy for the treatment of pancreatic cancer.

Robert J. Motzer, MD, attending physician, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses nivolumab for the treatment of metastatic renal cell carcinoma.

Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, from Yale-New Haven in Connecticut, discusses the benefit of treating lung cancer with immunotherapy.

Immunotherapies have shown great promise in the treatment of advanced cancers, including metastatic melanoma and non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC)

Several clinical trials combining nivolumab (Opdivo) with targeted therapies against ALK, c-MET, and T790M for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have been established as part of a collaboration between Novartis and Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS).

Harriet Kluger, MD, associate professor of medicine, Yale Cancer Center, discusses the toxicity profile of concurrent nivolumab and ipilimumab as seen in a phase I trial.

Elizabeth Plimack, MD, MS, director, Genitourinary Clinical Research, Fox Chase Cancer Center, discusses a phase Ib study of pembrolizumab for the treatment of patients with bladder cancer.

Almost 60% of patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer had tumor shrinkage when treated with the PD-L1 inhibitor pembrolizumab.

Treatment with nivolumab (Opdivo) demonstrated superior objective response rates (ORR) and longer durations of response compared with chemotherapy in a phase III trial of patients with previously treated advanced metastatic melanoma

Barbara Burtness, MD, discusses immune checkpoint inhibitors for head and neck cancers.

The FDA has assigned a priority review designation to nivolumab for pretreated patients with advanced melanoma, setting an action date for the drug as March 30, 2015.

A randomized, open-label study is currently under way to test the safety and efficacy of the novel immunoadjuvant, Multikine, in patients with head and neck cancer.

Lawrence Fong, MD, discusses the systemic antitumor effect and clinical response in a phase II trial of intratumoral electroporation of plasmid interleukin-12 (IL-12) in patients with advanced melanoma.

Igor Puzanov, MD, medical oncologist, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, discusses the potential to partner T-VEC with a targeted agent for the treatment of patients with melanoma.

Mario Sznol, MD, professor, Internal Medicine, Yale Cancer Center, discusses the potential for immunotherapy combinations for the treatment of melanoma.

Last week, the FDA approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for the treatment of patients with advanced or unresectable melanoma following progression on prior therapies.