Is pembrolizumab monotherapy the optimal treatment for elderly patients with PD-L1 positive advanced non-small cell lung cancer?
Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: When determining an optimal treatment strategy for a patient with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) over 75 years of age, clinicians are faced with the ongoing challenge of not having dedicated clinical trials on this subgroup and being forced to extrapolate findings derived from younger patients.However, we know that older adults with NSCLC may face different challenges compared to their younger counterparts, in terms of differences in the histopathology of their cancer cells (1), different body compositions, increased affliction of comorbidities, poorer performance status, higher risk for increased toxicity of systemic therapies, greater need for social support, and shorter life expectancy.The median age of NSCLC diagnosis in the United States (US) is 70 years and 68% of the patients are diagnosed after 65 years of age (2).Older patients are often under-represented in or excluded from clinical trials, with less than a third of clinical trial participants being older than 65 years.At the same time, in real-world clinical practice, almost two thirds of patients with NSCLC receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) were elderly patients (≥65 years) (3).Pembrolizumab, a fully humanized IgG4 antibody a g a i n s t t h e P D -1 r e c e p t o r h a s b e e n s t u d i e d a s monotherapy in key landmark trials which led to its approval initially in second line setting for patients with advanced NSCLC with PD-L1 tumor proportion
Source: Annals of Translational Medicine
Authors: Fiona Mienko, Balazs Halmos, Haiying Cheng
Language: English
Subfield: Oncology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W3010211658