Immuno-Oncology

Duncan Allen, MHA, introduced the audience to the OneR clinical research initiative, and Jeffrey Patton, MD, discussed how the hospital transparency law has bolstered the case for the value of community oncology.

The murine study, which assessed the combination of foretinib and an anti–PD-1 antibody, found that the regimen enhanced antitumor activity, offering promise in a cancer that has seen less success with immunotherapies than others.

This study protocol comes amid a paradigm shift in the treatment of advanced-stagen non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) following the emergence and uptake of immunotherapy.

Survey responses from patients with advanced cancer revealed that there were gaps in knowledge across various aspects of immunotherapy treatment, including about side effects and curative potential.

Researchers found the 3 treatments—axicabtagene ciloleucel, tisagenlecleucel, and lisocabtagene maraleucel (liso-cel)—showed promising efficacy and safety results across histological types, although they noted a need for more real-world data to validate the efficacy of liso-cel.

The findings come from a pooled analysis of the ELIANA and ENSIGN trials, both of which led to the approval of tisagenlecleucel for these patients.

Recent research showed that patients with Medicaid are more likely than commercially insured patients to have worsened end-of-life experience and that Black patients with breast cancer fare worse than other ethnic groups when it comes COVID-19 outcomes.

In a preclinical study, researchers were able to show that their modified adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector safely delivered the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) gene into the host cells and produced enough CAR T cells to cause effective tumor regression and elicit antitumor immunological characteristics in a mouse model of human T-cell leukemia.

The study, according to the researchers, is the first to demonstrate the potential use of major histocompatibility complex class II (MHC-II) expression as a predictor of immunotherapy response in these patients.

The Association of Community Cancer Centers’ (ACCC’s) annual survey on immuno-oncology (IO) therapies highlighted major concerns among health care providers regarding financial impacts, education, and access to clinical trial data.

Review findings outline the gut microbiome's potential impact on immunotherapy responses.

Compared with chemotherapy, patients receiving avelumab or another immunotherapy had higher response rates and higher rates of survival in locally advanced Merkel cell carcinoma (laMCC) and metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma (mMCC).

The researchers identified 3 immune subtypes of esophageal cancer (EC) among the samples, all of which had different prognostic implications.

Although there is hope chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy can revolutionize how to treat glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), there is still more research to be done, say investigators, noting that research on CAR T-cell therapy in this setting is still in early stages.

However, researchers also noted that similar to chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, CAR-NK cell treatment comes with its own set of challenges.

Data from IMpower 130, IMpower 132, and IMpower 150 confirm that combining atezolizumab with chemotherapy is the best first-line treatment in advanced NSCLC when anti-PD-L1 therapy is indicated.

ZUMA-7 results indicate axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta) improves event-free survival among adult patients with second-line relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL).

Yescarta, the first and only approved chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy for these patients, was shown to achieve durable responses in a majority of patients and reduced the risk of death compared with other treatments.

Previous research has suggested the efficacy of chimeric antigen receptor natural killer (CAR-NK) cells in hematological malignancies, and more recently, preclinical findings have raised the question of whether the type of treatment could be a viable, potentially more attractive option for solid tumors.

Larry D. Anderson Jr, MD, PhD, associate professor, Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses updated findings of the phase II KarMMa trial assessing ide-cel chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma after 4 or more prior lines of therapy.

Camille Hertzka, vice president and head of Oncology, US Medical, AstraZeneca, discussed updated findings of the PACIFIC trial that indicated a third of patients with unresectable non-small cell lung cancer are stable at 5 years.

The study's lead author said researchers have searched for a generation for an effective therapy to give to high-risk patients with renal cell carcinoma after initial surgery for the tumor.

Also, phase 2 results for atezolizumab presented during the 2021 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology could help patients in same setting who need another option.

Kirk Shepard, MD, chief medical officer, senior vice president, and head of Global Medical Affairs, Eisai, discusses findings of a study showcasing similar health-related quality of life (HRQOL) scores between lenvatinib/pembrolizumab vs chemotherapy in patients with advanced endometrial carcinoma.

Robert Iannone, MD, MSCE, executive vice president of research and development for Jazz Pharmaceuticals, addresses findings of an abstract presented at ASCO 2021 which showed preliminary efficacy of lurbinectedin in combination with irinotecan in patients with advanced endometrial carcinoma.

Various clinical trials are assessing the potential of neoantigen-based cancer vaccines.

Researchers outlined novel approaches to prevent and manage cytokine release syndrome (CRS), which occurs frequently in patients receiving chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy.