Ann Robinson’s research reviews—6 October 2022

Checkpoint inhibition: hopeful in lung cancer…Extensive stage small cell lung cancer (SCLC) that has spread throughout one or both lungs, or to distant sites, has a terrible prognosis with five year survival rates of only 2-3%. Standard treatment is with chemotherapy using platinum-etoposide combinations. But clearly there’s a pressing need for better options. The novel immunotherapy drug serplulimab acts as a checkpoint inhibitor by blocking programmed cell death-1 protein (PD-1), which tries to stop the body’s immune system from attacking cancer cells. In this randomised trial of 585 patients with extensive stage SCLC who had never had any systemic therapy, serplulimab plus chemotherapy was more effective than chemotherapy alone in prolonging survival (15.4 months v 10.9 months). Secondary outcomes—including progression-free survival, objective response rate, and duration of response—all seemed to be better in the serplulimab group, and the rate of adverse events was similar in both groups. We still need…
Read Original Article: Ann Robinson’s research reviews—6 October 2022 »