Recent Advances in Lung Cancer

Historically, lung cancer was long considered a poorly immunogenic malignancy. In recent years, however, immune checkpoint inhibitors have emerged as promising therapeutic agents in non-small cell lung cancer(NSCLC). To date, the best characterized and most therapeutically relevant immune checkpoints have been cytotoxic Tlymphocyte-associated antigen 4 (CTLA-4), and the programmed cell death protein-1 (PD-1) pathway. In early studies, PD-1/programmed cell death ligand-1(PD-L1) inhibitors demonstrated promising antitumor activity and durable clinical responses in a subset of patients. Based on these encouraging results, multiple different PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors have entered clinical development, and two agents (nivolumab and pembrolizumab) have gained regulatory approval in the United States for the treatment of NSCLC. In several large, randomized studies, PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors have produced significant improvements in overall survival compared with single-agent docetaxel delivered in the second-line setting, effectively establishing a new standard of care in NSCLC.