Combined immunotherapy and radiotherapy for lung cancer – pro
Administering checkpoint inhibitors can theoretically increase the incidence of pneumonitis and it, therefore, requires study. ON the other hand, there is also evidence that RT can help overcome resistance to immunotherapy. Currently, there are six ongoing clinical trials on the combination of SBRT with ICIs, some in stage IV and some in stage III, as presented by Yang et a, who concludes that studies on the sequencing of combination therapy have controversial results. He recommends that, “development of biomarkers to predict the response to combination therapy would help to identify the target patients who are most likely to benefit from treatment, which would improve the cost-effectiveness of ICIs. More studies are needed to understand the synergistic effect of combination therapy.”
Hui Yang, Tao Jin, Mengqian Li, Jianxin Xue, Bo Lu, Synergistic effect of immunotherapy and radiotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer: current clinical trials and prospective challenges
Precision Clinical Medicine, Volume 2, Issue 1, March 2019, Pages 5770,
Sharma P, Allison JP. The future of immune checkpoint therapy. Science 2015;348:5661.