New Treatment for Lung Cancer Reduces Risk of Recurrence by Nearly 40%; Positive Results of Phase 3 Trial Have Potential to Transform Patient Care, Researcher Says; Results Presented at AACR Annual Meeting

For the first time, an international phase-3 study--CheckMate-816-- conducted among people suffering from non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) clearly shows the benefits of a combination of immunotherapy with chemotherapy, administered prior to surgery. Approved last March in the United States by the FDA, this new treatment significantly improves survival and reduces risk of recurrence and death by almost 40%. The full results from this study were presented by Professor Nicolas Girard, oncologist and pulmonologist and Head of the Curie-Montsouris Thorax Institute in Paris, at a plenary session of the AACR Annual Meeting on April 11, 2022, in New Orleans, USA. These results were published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine. The NEJM article is titled “Neoadjuvant Nivolumab Plus Chemotherapy in Resectable Lung Cancer.”