Immunotherapy in gastroesophageal cancer

Dr Alan Burguete-Torres (Mexico) reviews recent data on immunotherapy in gastroesophageal cancer.

Introduction

Hello, I’m Dr Alan Burguete and I would like to welcome you to this GI CONNECT video newsletter.

I am really happy to share with you today some of the major advances that we saw in 2020 regarding the role of immunotherapy in upper GI cancer.

CheckMate-649

The first message I would like to share with you, is that we now have a new standard of care in the first-line, advanced setting for gastric cancer. The CheckMate-649 trial demonstrated a 3-month overall survival benefit in patients with PD-L1 CPS score ≥5 with a combination of nivolumab plus standard, platinum-based, chemotherapy. One of the caveats of this trial is that this was a PD-L1 enriched population, with over 60% of patients having a CPS score ≥5 and might not reflect what we see in the general population.

KEYNOTE-590

The second, practice changing trial for patients with advanced oesophageal cancer is the KEYNOTE-590 study which also demonstrated a benefit in progression-free and overall survival, particularly in patients with squamous oesophageal and PD-L1 expression with a CPS score ≥10.

CheckMate-577

The last trial I would like to share with you is CheckMate-577, which also demonstrated a substantial benefit in progression-free survival with the addition of nivolumab in the adjuvant setting for patients with oesophageal cancer who were treated with neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy and surgery.

Conclusion

So these are, in my opinion, the three most important advances regarding the role of immunotherapy in upper GI cancers.

I hope this information was useful for you and I hope to see you soon. Thanks for watching.