Dr. Patel on Benefit of Ipilimumab/Nivolumab Combo in High-Grade Neuroendocrine Carcinoma

Sandip Patel, MD, associate professor of medicine at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, discusses the benefit of the immune checkpoint inhibitor combination of ipilimumab (Yervoy) and nivolumab (Opdivo) in patients with rare, high-grade neuroendocrine tumors.

For the phase II SWOG S1609 DART trial, investigators set out to assess the effectiveness of the anti—CTLA-4 immunotherapeutic ipilimumab (1 mg/kg every 6 weeks) plus the anti–PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab (240 mg every 2 weeks), says Patel. The primary objective of the study is to measure tumor shrinkage by RECIST v1.1.

Investigators are evaluating each rare tumor cohort individually, and at the 2019 AACR Annual Meeting, Patel presented results from the neuroendocrine cohort. In this cohort, the combination was found to be efficacious in patients with high-grade disease with a 44% overall response rate compared with 0% in those with low or intermediate grade tumors. This benefit was seen irrespective of if the tumor originated in the lung, the gut, the gynecologic tract, or as an unknown primary.

<<< 2019 AACR Annual Meetieng