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New windows open for immunotherapy in lung cancer

Activating immune cells to destroy tumours is an effective strategy for treating an advanced lung cancer — but only for some people. Evidence that this approach has potential in early disease and as a combination therapy has now emerged.
  1. Lizza Hendriks

    1. Lizza E. Hendriks is in the Department of Cancer Medicine, Institut d’Oncologie Thoracique, Gustave Roussy, 94805 Villejuif, France, and in the Department of Pulmonary Diseases, Maastricht University Medical Center, the Netherlands.

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  2. Benjamin Besse

    1. Benjamin Besse is in the Department of Cancer Medicine, Institut d’Oncologie Thoracique, Gustave Roussy, 94805 Villejuif, France, and at the Université Paris Sud, Université Paris-Saclay.

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Chemotherapy became the standard treatment for lung cancer in the twentieth century1. But in the past 15 years, there has been a drive to improve outcomes for people with this still-deadly disease, either through therapies that target enzymes encoded by genes harbouring cancer-driving mutations, or through immunotherapies, which activate the body’s immune system to target tumours. Writing in The New England Journal of Medicine, two groups2,3 provide evidence that supports the use of immunotherapies to treat non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) at different stages of the disease.

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Nature 558, 376-377 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05312-9

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