FDA’s recent approval of an immunotherapy in the adjuvant setting for stage II-IIIA non-small cell lung cancer makes it all the more urgent to detect lung cancer at early stages.
The IMpower010 study compared adjuvant atezolizumab to standard of care in patients with complete resected stage IB-IIIA. For patients with stage IIA-IIIB the study demonstrated significant improved disease-free survival (DFS) in patients within PD-L1 ≥1% (HR=0.66;0.50-0.88) and for all randomized patients (HR=0.79; 0.64-0.96).
Most impressive was the difference in patients with high PD-L1 expression (≥ 50%) (HR=0.43; 0.27-0.68), while no difference was seen in patients with tumors having PD-L1<1%, HR=0.97 (0.72-1.31). The adjuvant immunotherapy was given after 1-4 series of adjuvant chemotherapy for complete resected early-stage NSCLC.
