VIDEO: Immunotherapy may not benefit metastatic NSCLC after 2 years with no progression
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Healio spoke with Charu Aggarwal, MD, MPH, about findings from her poster presentation on the impact on duration of immunotherapy on OS in metastatic non-small cell lung cancer presented at this year’s ASCO Annual Meeting.
“No one knows if continuation of immunotherapy beyond the ‘2-year mark’ is actually beneficial for patients,” Aggarwal, who is the Lesley M. Heisler assistant professor for lung cancer excellence at University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and a HemOnc Today Editorial Board Member, told Healio. “When clinical trials were designed for patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer, chemoimmunotherapy was delivered in an induction fashion for four cycles of combination chemoimmunotherapy followed by maintenance, either chemoimmunotherapy or maintenance immunotherapy alone, depending on histology.”
She added that these trials stopped treatment with immunotherapy when no progression was detected.
Aggarwal and colleagues investigated whether this was common practice, and to determine whether patients benefitted from continuation of therapy or discontinuing therapy.
The researchers determined that patients who did not experience progression at 2 years more likely continued treatment with immunotherapy than discontinued treatment.
They also found that “there was no difference” in OS between patients who did and did not continue immunotherapy after 2 years with no progression.
“It’s really important because there’s not just financial toxicity involved in continuation of therapy, there also may be immune-related adverse events, there is the time toxicity, and there’s also quality-of-life concerns with continuation of a therapy that actually may not be meaningful,” Aggarwal said.
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Sun L, et al. Abstract 9101. Presented at: ASCO Annual Meeting; June 2-6, 2023; Chicago.
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