Good news: combining immunotherapy and chemotherapy before lung cancer surgery reduces both the risk of recurrence and death, according to a study led by the Institut Curie.
- Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in men and the third in women.
- Adding nivolumab to chemotherapy did not increase the incidence of adverse effects or hinder the feasibility of lung cancer surgery.
“Checkmate 816”. This is the name of an international study, unveiled at the congress of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), which can give hope to people suffering from lung cancer. “Even in the setting of early-stage disease, survival for patients with this tumor is lower than for patients with other common cancers, such as colon, breast and prostate cancer. probability of survival at 5 years remains modest, patients present both a local or regional relapse and a metastatic relapse”wrote Prof. Christine M. Lovly, oncologist at Vanderbilt University (United States), in an editorial published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Reduced risk of recurrence and death
The results of the work presented on April 11 by Pr Nicolas Girard, oncologist and pulmonologist at the head of the Curie-Montsouris Thorax Instituterevealed that by combining conventional chemotherapy and three sessions of immunotherapy before surgery for bronchopulmonary cancer, the risk of recurrence fell by 37% at two years and that of death by 40%.
To reach this conclusion, the researchers compared the response rate of patients who received nivolumab (a monoclonal antibody) in combination with ipilimumab (a monoclonal antibody) with that of patients who received dual chemotherapy based on sodium salts. platinum in those with “operable non-small cell lung cancer”.
This treatment, which lasts two months, “can be considered a risk for the patient, but the results show the opposite. Especially since in a quarter of patients, the tumor becomes non-cancerous after treatment”, said, to West FranceProfessor Nicolas Girard.
“A request for early access in France”
The combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy before lung cancer surgery was approved in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before the publication of these results. “We hope that the immunotherapy lab will apply for early access in France. This treatment has everything to be the new standard”, said the oncologist.
Below is our Q&A program on lung cancer:
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