Open AccessPembrolizumab for the treatment of nonsmall cell lung cancer: Current status and future directions
Author(s) -
Qin Qin,
Baosheng Li
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of cancer research and therapeutics/journal of cancer research and therapeutics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 0973-1482
pISSN - 1998-4138
DOI - 10.4103/jcrt.jcrt_903_18
Subject(s) - pembrolizumab , medicine , oncology , lung cancer , chemotherapy , pneumonitis , immunotherapy , pd l1 , cancer , lung
The development of inhibitors of immune checkpoints has revolutionized the treatment for a subset of patients with advanced nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC), resulting in promising clinical outcomes and durable responses. Pembrolizumab, a humanized anti-programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) antibody, has been approved as a first-line treatment for patients with advanced NSCLC with PD-L1 expression of ≥50% and as a second-line treatment for PD-L1 expression of ≥1%. Pembrolizumab in combination with standard chemotherapy has shown better clinical outcomes than chemotherapy as a first-line therapy in patients with advanced NSCLC without targetable mutations, regardless of PD-L1 expression. In this review, we summarized the current indications of pembrolizumab for NSCLC, briefly described immune-relevant pneumonitis and discussed potential biomarkers to predict clinical efficacy.