Jessica S. Donington, MD of NYU Langone Health discusses the changes in stage 3A NSCLC using immunotherapy in resectable patients. The immune checkpoint inhibitors have completely changed Stage 4 treatment, now going to Stage 3. For the first trial, they use immunotherapy in Stage 3 for unresectable patients. How about the surgically resectable patients?
There are ongoing trials that look at immune checkpoint inhibitors in resectable Stage 3. Most of those are using those inhibitors in pre-operative setting. Looking from this setting is very important because tumor cells can be resected and checked what really happened. More trials are made that look at different immune checkpoint inhibitors in the pre-operative setting, then, to resection, some patients undergo chemotherapy and some do not. These are some of the activities to be expected in Stage 3 in the near future.