Cancer Therapy AdvisorToripalimab Plus Chemo Dubbed New Standard First-Line Therapy for ES-SCLC

The median progression-free survival was 5.8 months with toripalimab plus chemotherapy and 5.6 months with chemotherapy alone.

In a significant development in the field of oncology, a recent study presented at the ESMO Congress 2023 has highlighted the efficacy of toripalimab in combination with chemotherapy as a first-line therapy for patients with newly diagnosed extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC).

Key Points

• The study, known as the phase 3 EXTENTORCH trial, included 442 patients with ES-SCLC who had received no prior systemic therapy.
• Patients were randomly assigned to receive toripalimab plus chemotherapy or placebo plus chemotherapy.
• The median progression-free survival (PFS) was 5.8 months with toripalimab and 5.6 months with placebo.
• The 1-year PFS rate was 18.1% in the toripalimab arm and 4.9% in the placebo arm.
• The median overall survival (OS) was 14.6 months with toripalimab and 13.3 months with placebo.
• The 1-year OS rate was 63.1% in the toripalimab arm and 54.9% in the placebo arm.
• A biomarker analysis showed that tumor mutational burden was not associated with PFS or OS.

Despite being less common than non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is more aggressive and rapidly spreads throughout the body. Interestingly, SCLC accounts for about 15% of all lung cancer diagnoses in the United States each year. Due to its rapid growth, in 60% of SCLC cases, the cancer has already metastasized to other areas in the body by the time it is diagnosed.

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