Salma Jabbour, MD, on the Impact of the Ongoing KEYNOTE-799 Study

Pembrolizumab plus concurrent chemoradiation therapy appears promising for patients with unresectable, locally advanced, stage III non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to results from the ongoing KEYNOTE-799 study (NCT03631784) presented at the IASLC 2020 World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC) Singapore.

In an interview with CancerNetwork®, Salma Jabbour, MD, chief of Gastrointestinal Radiation Oncology at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, discussed the implications of these study findings and how they may impact the treatment of patients with unresectable, locally advanced, stage III NSCLC.

Transcription:

The implications of these findings are that this combination of therapies with earlier incorporation of chemoradiotherapy and immunotherapy is important. The current standard of care is really to give chemoradiation as a curative therapy for [patients with] stage III unresectable non–small cell lung cancer and these patients then go on to receive consolidative immunotherapy using durvalumab [Imfinzi]. And although these results are very promising, about 20% to 30% of patients never go on to receive durvalumab, which represents a significant unmet clinical need. And as a result, earlier incorporation of immunotherapy for stage III [disease after receipt of] chemoradiation means that [using] immunotherapy potentially earlier has a chance to treat their micrometastatic disease—the disease we can’t see but might be circulating in the bloodstream—to treat it earlier and to hopefully help those patients achieve better results with their therapy. The real implications here are that we can hopefully help patients with more promising therapies going forward.

Reference:

Reck M, Lee KH, Frost N, et al. Pembrolizumab plus platinum chemotherapy and radiotherapy in unresectable, locally advanced, stage III NSCLC: KEYNOTE-799. Presented at the IASLC 2020 World Conference on Lung Cancer Singapore. Abstract OA02.03.