Dr. Yuanbin Chen Discusses Long-Term CheckMate 9LA Data

Yuanbin Chen, MD, PhD, a thoracic oncologist from the Cancer & Hematology Centers of Western Michigan and Michigan State University, discusses 5-year follow-up results from CheckMate 9LA presented during the 2024 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting.

The CheckMate 9LA study evaluated first-line nivolumab plus ipilimumab with 2 cycles of platinum-doublet chemotherapy in patients with metastatic NSCLC.

“From [these] data, we can see the overall survival benefit of this combination versus chemotherapy remains true after 5 years of follow-up, with a median [overall] survival rate [that’s] still 18%,” Dr. Chen said.

He explained the importance of the long-term follow-up data on the regimen that were presented at the meeting.

“That means almost 1 out of 5 patients are able to live for longer than 5 years if they’re treated with the 9LA regimen as their first-line treatment,” Dr. Chen said. “For those patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer [NSCLC], I would think this is a very encouraging result, and it is very reassuring with such a long-term follow-up.”

The CheckMate 9LA study previously showed that first-line nivolumab plus ipilimumab with 2 cycles of platinum-doublet chemotherapy had a “long-term, durable survival benefit” compared with chemotherapy alone in patients with metastatic NSCLC, “regardless of tumor PD-L1 expression or histology,” according to the abstract presented at the meeting by Martin Reck, MD, PhD, and fellow CheckMate 9LA study investigators.

The CheckMate 9LA regimen was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2020 as a first-line treatment for adults with metastatic or recurrent NSCLC. The regimen is a combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab with 2 cycles of platinum-doublet chemotherapy as a first-line treatment for adults with metastatic or recurrent NSCLC.

“It has been FDA approved, and it has been commonly used in our oncology practice,” Dr. Chen said. “We are glad to hear the updated data from [this meeting] about the long-term follow-up of the [CheckMate] 9LA regimen.”

He spoke about what the long-term follow-up results showed about clinical outcomes across tumor PD-L1 expression profiles.

“The other key point I see is it seems patients with cancer with low PD-L1 still get significant benefit from the 9LA regimen,” Dr. Chen said.

This is especially important considering the historical challenges of treating patients with this characteristic, he explained.

“We know that it is harder to treat patient populations with low PD-L1 expression or negative PD-L1 expression. A lot of times, that benefit of some other immunotherapy-based regimen might not be that effective,” Dr. Chen said. “I believe… [nivolumab plus ipilimumab] with upfront chemotherapy biologically really helped to tackle this challenge and improve [patient] survival.”