Prospects of targeted and immune therapies in SCLC

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is a tumor with a poor prognosis, often diagnosed in an advanced stage. Despite aggressive treatment of early and locally advanced disease, SCLC often relapses. First line chemotherapy provides good response rates in advanced disease, but progression free and overall survival are limited. New drugs such as some targeted therapies and immune therapies are promising in SCLC.

Areas covered: In this review, we discuss the preclinical rationale and trial data for targeted therapies and immune therapies in SCLC, with a specific focus on clinical trials.

Expert commentary: Lack of identification of clear prognostic and predictive biomarkers has limited the advances in treatment efficacy. This has most likely been the main cause of failure for compounds tested so far. Due to the highly mutational profile and the rapid growth pattern of SCLC, immunotherapy combined with chemotherapy seems the most promising treatment option. Concerning targeted agents, achievements made so far are small, but DLL3-antibodies or combinations of PARPi and immunotherapy could be very promising. These promising strategies also need testing in limited disease.

KEYWORDS:

• Checkpoint inhibitors
• immune therapy
• small cell lung cancer
• targeted therapy
• vaccination therapy

Acknowledgments

L. Hendriks was the recipient of the Diploma in Clinical and Translational Research in Oncology grant for the year 2017–2018.

Declaration of interest

L. Hendriks has recieved research funding from Roche and Boehringer Ingelheim, advisory board fees from Boehringer and BMS and travel reimbursement from Roche and BMS. M. Reck has recieved honoraria for lectures and consultancy from Roche, Abbvie, AstraZeneca, BMS, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Celgene, Lilly, MSD, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded