Dr. Chandra P. Belani on the Importance of Immunotherapies in Treating Lung Cancer

Chandra P. Belani, MD, deputy director, Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute, Miriam Beckner Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Penn State Hershey College of Medicine, talks about how immunotherapies targeting PD-L1 and PD-1 are showing activity in lung cancer.

Belani says that immunotherapies in lung cancer are only currently approved for use in the second-line setting and should be in oncologists’ armamentarium. The drugs that are currently approved are nivolomab, which is approved for squamous cell carcinoma and non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), as well as pembrolizumab.

Belani adds that pembrolizumab is preferential when treating patients with a high PD-L1 expression in their tumors.