New combination shows promise in advanced lung cancer

CANCER DIGEST – April 8, 2018 – A new combination therapy of using an immunotherapy drug, with a new and powerful immune stimulation drug, shows promise in patients whose advanced lung cancer has become resistant to other therapies, preliminary results of a clinical trial shows.

The study is the first time the immune stimulant has been combined with one of the new class of drugs, called checkpoint drugs such as nivolumab (OPDIVO®) and pembrolizumab (Keytruda) according to study leaders Drs. John Wrangle, and Mark Rubinstein, PhD., of the Hollings Cancer Center at the Medical University of South Carolina.

In the small clinical trial, of the 21 patients treated, nine previously either had stable disease or responded to single-agent immunotherapy before becoming resistant to the immunotherapy and having their cancer resume progression. Of these nine patients, 100 percent either regained stable disease or had a partial response to the new combination treatment used in this study.

The combination therapy used the immunotherapy nivolumab (OPDIVO®) and the immune stimulant ALT-803, which mobilizes lymphocytes (white blood cells) to attack the tumor cells.

"We can reassert control, at least in terms of stable disease, in essentially everybody we've treated so far," Wrangle said.