ASCO 2023: Neoadjuvant Pembrolizumab Brought Big Benefit in Early-Stage Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer with Heather A. Wakelee, MD, FASCO

Non-small cell lung cancer was one of the big topics at the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting where Heather Wakelee, MD, FASCO, Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Oncology at Stanford University in California, was overheard reminding a junior cancer doctor that the only adjuvant therapy for lung cancer had been chemotherapy just a couple of decades previously.  Now, a plethora of targeted therapies are available, and Wakelee reported a big improvement in outcome from one of them—pembrolizumab—used both before and after surgery in early Stage II and III disease (mostly Stage III). “These results indicate perioperative pembrolizumab given in combination with chemotherapy prior to surgery and for up to one year as a single agent after surgery led to significant improvement in event-free survival (defined by local progression precluding definitive surgery, recurrence, or death) with a strong trend towards improvement in overall survival. These results indicate peri-operative pembrolizumab significantly improves outcomes for patients with potentially resectable Stage II-III NSCLC,” said Wakelee. After her talk at ASCO, she discussed her group’s findings with OncTimesTalk correspondent, Peter Goodwin.