Immunotherapy After Chemoradiotherapy for Stage III Lung Cancer
Posted: Thursday, October 19, 2017
Treating patients with the monoclonal antibody durvalumab after chemoradiotherapy improved progression-free survival in patients with stage III, locally advanced, unresectable non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Secondary study endpoints, including objective response rate, duration of response, and time to death or distant metastasis, also seemed to favor the use of durvalumab. Scott J. Antonia, MD, PhD, of Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, and colleagues published their phase III study findings in The New England Journal of Medicine.
A total of 713 patients with NSCLC took part in the study. All patients received two or more cycles of platinum-based chemotherapy along with radiation therapy. Of the 709 patients who received consolidation therapy, 473 were randomly chosen to receive durvalumab, which blocks programmed cell death ligand 1 binding to programmed cell death protein 1 and CD80, and 236 patients were given a placebo.
Median progression-free survival for those given durvalumab was 16.8 months, compared with 5.6 months for those given the placebo. In addition, 28.4% of patients responded to durvalumab, versus 16.0% of those who did not. The median time to death or distant metastasis was 23.2 months with durvalumab and 14.6 months with placebo. Safety was reported to be similar between the two groups.
