The following is a lightly edited transcript of a teleconference discussion recorded in April 2018.
Suman Kambhampati, MD. Immuno-oncology is a paradigm-shifting treatment approach. It is an easy-to-understand term for both providers and for patients. The underlying principle is that the body’s own immune system is used or stimulated to fight cancer, and there are drugs that clearly have shown huge promise for this, not only in oncology, but also for other diseases. Time will tell whether that really pans out or not, but to begin with, the emphasis has been inoncology, and therefore, the term immunooncology is fitting.
Dr. Kaster. It was encouraging at first, especially when ipilimumab came out, to see the effects on patients with melanoma. Then the KEYNOTE-024 trial came out, and we were able to jump in anduse monoclonal antibodies directed against programmed death 1 (PD-1) in the first line, which is when things got exciting.1 We have a smaller populationin Boise, so PD-1s in lung cancer have had the biggest impact on our patients so far.
Ellen Nason, RN, MSN. Patients are open to immunotherapies.They’re excited about it. And as the other panelists have said, you can start broadly, as the body fights the cancer on its own, to providing more specific details as a patient wants more information. Immuno-oncology is definitely accepted by patients, and they’re very excited about it, especially with all the news about new therapies.
Dr. Kambhampati. For the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) population, lung cancer has seen significant impact, and now it’s translating into other diseases through more research, trials, and better understanding about how these drugs are used and work.
The paradigm is shifting toward offering these drugs not only in metastatic cancers, but also in the surgically resectable tumors. The 2018 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) meeting, just concluded. At the meeting several abstracts reported instances where immunooncology drugs are being introduced in the early phases of lung cancer and showing outstanding results. It’s very much possible that we’re going to see less use of traditional chemotherapy in the near future.
Ms. Nason. I primarily work with solid tumors,and the majority of the population I work with have lung cancer. So we’re excited about some of the results that we’ve seen and the lower toxicity involved. Recently, we’ve begun using durvalumab with patients with stage III disease. We have about 5 people now that are using it as a maintenance or consolidative treatment vs just using it for patients with stage IV disease. Hopefully, we’ll see some of the same results describedin the paper published on it.2
Dr. Kaster. Yes, we are incorporating these new changes into care as they're coming out. As Ms. Nason mentioned, we're already using immunotherapies in earlier settings, and we are seeing as much research that could be translated into care soon, like combining immunotherapies
in first-line settings, as we see in the Checkmate-227 study with nivolumab and ipilimumab.3,4 The landscape is going to change dramatically in the next couple of years.
Accessing Testing For First-Line Treatments
Dr. Lynch. There has been an ongoing discussionin the literature on accessing appropriate testing—delays in testing can result in patients who are not able to access the best targeted drugs on a first-line basis. The drug companiesand the VA have become highly sensitized to ensuring that veterans are accessing the appropriate testing. We are expanding the capability of VA labs to do that testing.
Ms. Nason. I want to put in a plug for the VA Precision Oncology Program (POP). It’s about 2 years into its existence, and Neil Spector, MD, is the director. The POP pays for sequencing the tumor samples.
A new sequencing contract will go into effect October 2018 and will include sequencing for hematologic malignancies in addition to the current testing of solid tumors. Patients from New York who have been unable to receive testing through the current vendors used by POP, will be included in the new contract. It is important to note that POP is working closely with the National Pharmacy Benefit Management Service (PBM) to develop a policy for approving off-label use of US Food and Drug Administration-approved targeted therapies based on sequenced data collected on patients tested through POP.