Current status of durvalumab in the lung cancer treatment

05/2021

Doc. MUDr. David Vrána, Ph.D.

Komplexní onkologické centrum, Nový Jičín

SUMMARY

Lung cancer represents one of the most frequent type of cancer. They can be classified as non-small cell lung cancer and small cell lung cancer. The treatment strategy of these tumors unfortunately didn't change significantly over the last couple years until the immunotherapy and tyrosine kinase inhibitors were launched into daily clinical practice. Immunotherapy, more specifically checkpoint inhibitors has quickly established their role in the treatment of several tumor types and nowadays has confirmed their effectivity in the first line of the palliative treatment of the non-small cell and small cell lung cancer including the maintenance therapy of the non-small cell lung cancer after radical chemoradiotherapy. Durvalumab is the monoclonal antibody against programmed cell death-ligand 1 (PD-L1), which blocks the interaction of the ligand PD-L1 and programmed cell death 1 receptor (PD-1) / CD80 which leads the significant increase in the immune response against cancer. At the same time this influencing of the immunity has brought the new adverse events which are different from the adverse events of the chemotherapy or tyrosine kinase inhibitors.

Key words

lung cancer, immunotherapy, durvalumab, PACIFIC study, CASPIAN study