Lung highlights from ESMO 2018

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Published: 26 Oct 2018
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Dr Federico Cappuzzo - AUSL della Romagna-Ravenna, Ravenna, Italy

Dr Capuzzo speaks with ecancer at ESMO 2018 in Munich about results from lung cancer trials reported at the conference.

He reports a confirmed survival benefit in the PACIFIC trial for patients with high and medium PD-L1 expression, and negative results from a second-line study of atezolizumab in small cell lung cancer, as discussed by Dr Jean-Louis Pujol.

Dr Capuzzo also spoke with ecancer about the IMpower130 study of atezolizumab as first-line NSCLC therapy.

ecancer's filming has been kindly supported by MSD through the ecancer Global Foundation. ecancer is editorially independent and there is no influence over content.

In addition to the IMpower trials we also have other important studies that have been presented. We had an update on the PACIFIC trial that is a study that is focussed on patients with locally advanced disease. The trial consists of a treatment with durvalumab versus placebo after chemoradiation. In the update that was presented on Sunday at ESMO there is a confirmation of the benefit in terms of survival that is produced by the use of durvalumab after chemoradiation. This benefit is present particularly in the group of patients with high levels or intermediate levels of PD-L1 expression while no benefit was observed in the group of patients without any PD-L1 expression.


Also there are some additional information in another important disease that is small cell lung cancer. Fortunately during the World Lung Cancer Conference we had the evidence from a randomised clinical trial that atezolizumab together with chemotherapy prolonged survival in the first line setting. At this meeting were presented additional data of atezolizumab in the second line setting and unfortunately this data was negative. This is important for clinical practice because frequently our patients with small cell lung cancer after chemotherapy, after first line chemotherapy, frequently ask for immunotherapy. At the present time, based particularly on this data, of course we don’t have any evidence supporting the use of immunotherapy in pre-treated small cell lung cancer.