This therapy can cure lung cancer in its early stages.

People with lung cancer may have access to a new treatment that represents a leap forward in quality. According to research presented in The New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in Chicago, lung cancer patients who received the immunotherapy drug nivolumab , along with standard chemotherapy before surgery, had an increased long-term survival rate five years after completing treatment compared to those who received chemotherapy alone.

A total of 358 patients selected worldwide and diagnosed with the most common type of lung cancer, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), at a stage where the tumor could be surgically removed, participated in the study.

Despite undergoing surgery, more than 50% of these lung cancer patients experience a relapse. Immunotherapy drugs known as immune checkpoint inhibitors, particularly those that block a receptor called PD-1, have been shown to improve survival in patients with advanced cancers by enabling the patient's immune system to recognize and attack the tumor.

Until now, no study has shown a long-term benefit from this treatment in the early stages of lung cancer, acknowledged Professor Patrick Forde, of Trinity St. James's Cancer Institute and Trinity College Dublin School of Medicine , who led the CheckMate 816 trial.

Forde led the first clinical trial of immunotherapy before surgery (neoadjuvant therapy) for lung cancer, published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2018. That study showed that among 20 patients who underwent surgery after receiving two doses of immunotherapy, nearly half had no significant cancer at the time of surgery.

"Immunotherapy has allowed many patients with advanced lung cancer to live longer with a good quality of life. Now, for the first time, we have strong evidence that it can also improve the chances of cure in the early stages of the disease," Forde said.

In the group receiving the combination therapy, 24% of patients achieved a complete pathological response—that is, no detectable cancer at the time of surgery—and none of them died from cancer in the following five years.

These results add to those already published from the same study, which showed greater tumor clearance before surgery and a lower relapse rate. As a result, the combination of nivolumab and chemotherapy was approved as standard treatment in several countries, including Ireland.

In addition, Forde is co-leading the international NeoCOAST-2 trial, also underway in Irish hospitals, which is investigating the addition of a new treatment—an antibody-conjugated combination (ADC)—to the standard regimen. Initial data, published this week in Nature Medicine, suggest that this triple combination could further improve surgical outcomes.