The addition of the cancer immunotherapy drug atezolizumab to the standard of care concurrent chemoradiation (cCRT) did not improve overall survival for patients with limited-stage small cell lung cancer (LS-SCLC) in the second planned interim analysis of the NRG Oncology/Alliance NRG-LU005 clinical trial. These results were recently reported during the Plenary Session of the American Society for Radiation Oncology Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. "While atezolizumab given concurrently with chemoradiation did not improve survival, we have still learned quite a bit from these findings.
With the success of the ADRIATIC trial presented at ASCO earlier this year, it is clear that LS-SCLC patients benefit from immunotherapy, but it should be given after completion of chemoradiation and not concurrently. Our results also suggest that twice daily radiation may have performed better and could be considered the preferred radiation regimen for these patients," stated Kristin A. Higgins, MD, Professor of Radiation Oncology at City of Hope National Medical Center and Chief Clinical Officer, City of Hope Atlanta, and the lead author of the NRG-LU005 abstract.
NRG-LU005 is an open-label, randomized, phase III, international clinical study that enrolled 554 eligible patients with LS-SCLC in the U.S. and Japan.
Patients received one cycle of chemotherapy prior to registration in the trial. Following registration, patients were stratified by choice of cisplatin or carboplatin chemotherapy, t.