%0 Journal Article %T Avelumab: another active immune checkpoint inhibitor in nonsmall cell lung cancer %A Xie, Hao %A Adjei, Alex A. %J Translational Lung Cancer Research %D 2017 %B 2017 %9 %! Avelumab: another active immune checkpoint inhibitor in nonsmall cell lung cancer %K %X Inhibitors of the immune checkpoints PD-1 and PD-L1 have changed the standard of care and clinical outcome of patients with many cancer types. For example, patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were traditionally treated with chemotherapy with or without anti-angiogenic agents if their tumors did not carry actionable driver mutations. The use of immune checkpoint inhibitors provided additional options, in both the first-line and second-line settings, for these patients with clinically significant, often durable responses and prolonged survival. Nivolumab, an anti-PD-1 antibody, has been approved for both advanced non-squamous and squamous NSCLC in the second-line setting, after it demonstrated superior overall survival to docetaxel in large randomized phase 3 trials (1,2). Pembrolizumab, another anti-PD-1 antibody, has been approved for previously treated, PD-L1 positive, advanced NSCLC (3). The same applies to atezolizumab, an anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody (4). In addition, pembrolizumab also received regulatory approval as first-line therapy for PD-L1 positive NSCLC (5). The combination of pembrolizumab and carboplatin/pemetrexed as first-line therapy for non-squamous NSCLC has also demonstrated superior response rate and progression-free survival to chemotherapy alone, and is approved for use in the US (6). %U https://tlcr.amegroups.org/article/view/17156 %P S41-S43 %@ 2226-4477