A brief report on combination chemotherapy and anti-programmed death (ligand) 1 treatment in small-cell lung cancer: did we choose the optimal chemotherapy backbone?

Mankor, J.M.; Zwierenga, A.F.; Dumoulin, D.W.; Neefjes, J.J.C.; Aerts, J.G.J.V.

doi:doi:10.1016/j.ejca.2020.06.029

Persistent URL of this record https://hdl.handle.net/1887/3182554

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Medicine / Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC)

Mankor, J.M.; Zwierenga, A.F.; Dumoulin, D.W.; Neefjes, J.J.C.; Aerts, J.G.J.V. (2020)

A brief report on combination chemotherapy and anti-programmed death (ligand) 1 treatment in small-cell lung cancer: did we choose the optimal chemotherapy backbone?

Article / Letter to editor

Extensive-stage small-cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC) is an aggressive cancer that remains very hard to treat. The life expectancy of a patient diagnosed with this disease has not changed over the past three decades. Recently, three large clinical studies showed a survival benefit by adding an anti-programmed death (ligand) 1 (PD-(L) 1 antibody to the current chemotherapy regimen. Although significant and important, the benefit seems less than what has been achieved in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer treated with chemoimmunotherapy. A number of hypotheses have been explored to explain this discrepancy. Here, we hypothesise that the current chemotherapy backbone in ES-SCLC does not contain the optimal drugs to trigger immunogenic cell death and therefore does not induce a synergy between chemotherapy and immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy. Thereby, we advocate that doxorubicin treatment instead of etoposide should be reconsidered as standard-of-care (SoC) first-line treatment of...Show moreExtensive-stage small-cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC) is an aggressive cancer that remains very hard to treat. The life expectancy of a patient diagnosed with this disease has not changed over the past three decades. Recently, three large clinical studies showed a survival benefit by adding an anti-programmed death (ligand) 1 (PD-(L) 1 antibody to the current chemotherapy regimen. Although significant and important, the benefit seems less than what has been achieved in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer treated with chemoimmunotherapy. A number of hypotheses have been explored to explain this discrepancy. Here, we hypothesise that the current chemotherapy backbone in ES-SCLC does not contain the optimal drugs to trigger immunogenic cell death and therefore does not induce a synergy between chemotherapy and immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy. Thereby, we advocate that doxorubicin treatment instead of etoposide should be reconsidered as standard-of-care (SoC) first-line treatment of SCLC. (c) 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Show less

Small-cell lung cancer

Immunogenic cell death