22 Aug Incidence of Pneumonitis from PD-1 Blockers Across Cancers Identified

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Mizuki Nishino, MD MPH
Department of Radiology
Brigham and Women’s Hospital and
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Boston, Massachusetts

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: Immune-checkpoint inhibitors including PD-1 and PD-L1 inhibitors have brought remarkable advances in treatment of cancer patients. Immune-checkpoint inhibitors are associated with a unique set of adverse events, termed immune-related adverse events (irAEs).

Among various irAEs, PD-1 inhibitor-related pneumonitis is a relatively uncommon yet clinically significant and potentially lethal event, and has been recognized as an “event of special interest”. We have previously reported the clinical and radiographic characteristics of PD-1 inhibitor-related pneumonitis in advanced melanoma patients and non-small-cell lung cancer patients. In spite of the increasing clinical needs to further understand the entity in terms of risk factors and incidence among different patient cohort, there has been no report of the incidence of PD-1 inhibitor-related pneumonitis across different tumor types and different therapeutic regimen.

These backgrounds motivated us to perform a meta-analysis of the incidence of pneumonitis in published trials of PD-1 inhibitors, in order to further advance knowledge of this emerging entity and identify the needs for future studies.

MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings?

Response: In the present meta-analysis of 20 published clinical trials of melanoma, non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and renal cell carcinoma (RCC) demonstrated that the incidence of PD-1 inhibitor-related pneumonitis is significantly higher in NSCLC and renal cell carcinoma compared to melanoma, and during combination therapy compared to monotherapy.

We believe that these findings contribute to enhance awareness of this entity among clinical providers and provide a basis for further investigations to meet the urgent clinical needs.

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Last Updated on December 11, 2017 by Marie Benz MD FAAD