June 30, 2015 – Antibody and Lung Cancer

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:01 — 1.4MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Anchor lead:  There’s hope for people with one type of lung cancer, Elizabeth Tracey reports

About one-third of people with lung cancer have a type known as squamous cell, and for these patients, an antibody called nivolumab has been shown to help a lot.  That’s according to research by Julie Brahmer, a lung cancer expert at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues.

Brahmer: This is the first time an immunotherapy has shown a survival advantage compared to chemotherapy.  Patients with squamous cell histology that had metastatic disease, nivolamab consistently showed an increased response rate, as well as increased overall survival, and the duration of response lasted much longer with nivolamab compared to docetaxel, so that has led to the approval of this antibody for patients with squamous cell histology.    :30

Brahmer says nivolumab can now be considered as part of the strategy for treating lung cancer, along with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.