June 2021

The 2021 American Thyroid Association Guidelines for Management of Patients with Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer expand on discussions about treatment goals and palliative care.

The potential benefit of avelumab in the subgroup of patients with high PD-L1 expression in JAVELIN HEAD AND NECK 100 provides a basis for further investigation and suggests a potential role for immune checkpoint inhibitors for locally advanced HNSCC.

Investigators anticipate that improved versions of the application will evolve over the phases as patient-specific queries are optimized and as cancer-specific pathways are incorporated. A multidisciplinary team will provide a tailored and integrative approach, concluded the investigators.

An excerpt from the Targeted Talks highlights the interest in PD-1/PD-L1 and CTLA-4 antibodies, their mechanisms of action, and the potential they bring to the immunotherapy field.

Agents that inhibit SHP2 attack cancer cells in a way that is distinct from other therapies, and data showing the potential efficacy of such therapies, are fueling more research.

The defining feature of the 5th Annual Live Medical Crossfire®: Hematologic Malignancies program is the extensive interactivity between faculty and audience.

Newer immunotherapy approaches continue to be explored to treat patients with relapsed or refractory MCC after PD-1/ PD-L1 inhibition.

Research has suggested that neoadjuvant immunotherapy combinations are superior to adjuvant immunotherapy for patients with stage III melanoma.

Targeted therapy use in melanoma has been extended beyond just metastatic disease to now include adjuvant therapy for patients with resected stage III melanoma.

A frontline regimen nivolumab, ipilimumab, and 2 cycles of chemotherapy yielded an improvement in overall survival versus chemotherapy alone in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer. The benefit was observed regardless of tumor mutational burden status in the tissue or blood.

First-line treatment with camrelizumab, an investigational PD-1 inhibitor, plus chemotherapy elicited robust and durable clinical responses in patients with advanced squamous non–small cell lung cancer.

First-in-human results of a phase 1 trial (NCT03319940) evaluating AMG 757 in patients with small cell lung cancer revealed early signals of efficacy and a favorable safety profile in findings presented at the European Lung Cancer Virtual Congress 2021.

Results from an observational, multicenter study that evaluated osimertinib reveal encouraging real-world efficacy and acceptable safety in patients with EGFR-positive, advanced non–small cell lung cancer.

The time to initiate durvalumab treatment following chemoradiation was delayed in the real-world setting trial PACIFIC-R (NCT02125461) compared with the earlier phase 3 PACIFIC trial.

Updated findings from the early-stage KRYSTAL-1 study showed that treatment with adagrasib resulted in durable responses, broad disease control, and provided extensive predicted coverage throughout the dosing interval in patients with KRAS G12Cmutant advanced non–small cell lung cancer.

Arjun V. Balar, MD, co-physician editor in chief of Targeted Therapies in Oncology, discusses the proceedings of the 3-day Oncologic Drug Advisory Committee meeting on accelerated approvals for PD-1/PD-L1 antibodies in solid tumor indications that failed to show confirmatory benefit.

An FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee meeting resulted in continued approval for 4 of 6 indications that were discussed, although all 6 indications did not demonstrate clinical benefit in confirmatory studies. The meeting, held April 27-29, evaluated anti–PD-1/PD-L1 drugs that received accelerated approvals through the FDA’s accelerated approval program, a nearly 30-year-old initiative to expedite the approval process.

Results from the first phase of the broad, collaborative MYLUNG research study in lung cancer provide a close-up look at current biomarker testing rates and turnaround times for patients treated in community practices within The US Oncology Network.

Approaches that pair anti-TIGIT antibodies with other immune checkpoint inhibitors have sparked interest among investigators. Results of early-stage studies evaluating these unique combinations were recently presented at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2021. Later-stage studies are ongoing.