ESMO Immuno-Oncology 2021 – Geneva
Immune checkpoint blockade combined with chemotherapy in solid tumors
Lecture Board: Yunpeng Yang, MD; Li Zhang, MD
Established and novel chemo-free combinations in immuno-oncology
Lecture Board: Tibor Csőszi, MD; Shuxiang Ma, MD; Qiming Wang, MD, PhD
Medical Writer: Eva Eckelhart, PhD; Florence Boulmé, PhD
Publishing Editor: Anna Fenzl, PhD
Preface
The ESMO Immuno-Oncology Congress 2021 took place as a hybrid event either in Geneva or online from 8th to 11th December 2021. Compared with the annual ESMO scientific congress, this meeting focused exclusively on the most exciting new data in the promising field of immuno-oncology. In total, 1,124 participants from 67 countries attended one of the 31 on-demand sessions featuring over 193 abstracts, 178 e-posters, 146 presentations and 20 educational sessions.
Immune checkpoint blockade combined with chemotherapy in solid tumors
Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is a severe disease with poor outcomes since the majority of patients present with stage IV disease at diagnosis. Approved treatment options in the first-line setting of advanced NSCLC (aNSCLC) with wildtype EGFR/ALK include bevacizumab - a VEGF targeting monoclonal antibody - and PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors in combination with chemotherapy.
Established and novel chemo-free combinations in immuno-oncology
Immunotherapy was the major breakthrough in the treatment of lung cancer in the past years. The PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab is approved for the treatment of various tumor entities including advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (a/mNSCLC). Lenvatinib, a multikinase inhibitor and antineoplastic agent that is so far approved for certain solid tumors but not NSCLC, already showed promising antitumoral effects and a manageable safety profile when combined with pembrolizumab in a phase I/II trial.
EXPERT VIDEOS
All video interviews from ESMO IO 2021
Mark G. Kris outlines the potential of circulating tumor DNA along the neoadjuvant cancer treatment timeline, explains which correlations have been observed between changes in ctDNA levels and clinical outcomes in patients with early-stage lung cancer and how monitoring of ctDNA can potentially be utilized in clinical practice to guide the management of these patients, while also depicting the limitations of this approach. The excitement in the field of lung cancer about new drugs targeting KRAS in combination with immunotherapy for first line treatment in stage IV NSCLC is addressed, too.
David McDermott deals with the question if combination therapy is superior to single agent PD-1/PD-L1 blockade in the adjuvant setting, highlights tools/biomarkers for appropriate patient selection for immune checkpoint inhibitor therapies, future strategies to potentially overcome resistance to ICIs, potential new outcome parameters for clinical trials investigating ICIs and highlights the most relevant findings presented at ESMO IO 2021 in terms of immuno-oncology.
Immunotherapy represents an exciting new option, particularly in patients with squamous cell cancer, and in prior or current smokers. In the CheckMate 017 trial, the PD-1 inhibitor nivolumab provided clinically meaningful and statistically significant overall survival benefit independent of PD-L1 expression in a population of previously treated patients with advanced squamous-cell lung cancer.
