Vassiliki Papadimitrakopoulou, MD of MD Anderson Cancer Center discusses checkpoint inhibitors as first line therapy, pembrolizumab alone and in combination with other checkpoint inhibitors. There are a number of clinical trials exploring the areas of using checkpoint inhibitors as first-line therapy for non-small-cell lung cancer. Pembrolizumab has been approved for patients with expression of 50% or more PD-L1 in their tumor. In addition, there is a preliminary data and accelerated approval from FDA for the combination of pembrolizumab with chemotherapy based on progression-free survival and overall response rate compared to standard chemotherapy.
With that advancement, there are a number of recent studies including combinations of checkpoint inhibitors in the front-line, combinations of alternative chemotherapy agents with checkpoint inhibitors in the front-line and combinations of antiandrogenic, checkpoint inhibitor and chemotherapy.