Immune checkpoint inhibitors are now becoming approved and commercially available for patients with previously treated advanced NSCLC. Dr. Eddie Garon, medical oncologist at UCLA, summarizes key data and explains their current role in treatment.

Drs. Ben Solomon, Leora Horn, & Jack West consider how valuable testing for PD-L1 expression is in clinical practice and whether it should be integrated in clinical decision making around immunotherapies.

Dr. Ben Levy discusses two trials that are trying to determine if immunotherapy can help lung cancer patients with earlier stage disease. Click here for information about the PACIFIC trial. The lung cancer vaccine trial will begin in early 2016.

Drs. Leora Horn, Ben Solomon, & Jack West consider whether the data suggest that the better tested PD1 and PD-L1 inhibitors have differences in activity or tolerability or are essentially interchangeable.

Dr. Eddie Garon from UCLA Medical Center reviews the general mechanism of action of immune checkpoint inhibitors and how they can be an effective therapy in lung cancer.

In the span of a week, we’ve just had new FDA approvals of Keytruda (pembrolizumab) for previously treated advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with tumors that express PD-L1, followed by a broadened approval for Opdivo (nivolumab) for previously...

The current standard of care for SCLC shows limited results with high toxicities. Drs. Soria, Gandhi, and West discuss new ASCO 2015 data that show promise for a subset of patients with PD-L1 expression on Keytruda (pembrolizumab) or Opdivo (nivolumab).

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Guest post by Dr. Nate Pennell, a board certified medical oncologist at the Taussig Cancer Center at the Cleveland Clinic. He specializes in the treatment of thoracic malignancies with a focus on lung cancer. Dr.

Novel immunotherapy agent atezolizumab (MPDL3280A) looks superior to Taxotere (docetaxel) in a study, specifically for patients with PD-L1. What are the implications of multiple agents with similar mechanisms of action in the same clinical settings?

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The immune checkpoint inhibitor Opdivo (nivolumab) shows better efficacy than Taxotere (docetaxel) for advanced non-squamous NSCLC, but this was seen only in patients with PD-L1 protein expression on their tumor. Should we be using this as a biomarker?

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