Dr. Drilon on Immunotherapy in Lung Cancer

Alexander Drilon, MD, medical oncologist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses immunotherapy in patients with lung cancer.

Not every patient is going to benefit from immunotherapy, explains Drilon. Data have recently been discovered that the likelihood of response to single-agent immune checkpoint inhibitors in EGFR-mutant and ALK-rearranged lung cancers is relatively low.

These low response rates could be because the tumors that harbor a driver may be more naïve and possibly less visible to the immune system, states Drilon. In clinical trials, the same level of response is not being seen in the patients who have a more substantial smoking history and who don’t have EGFR, ALK, or high PD-L1 staining.