Practice and prospect of radiotherapy and immunotherapy for lung cancer / 中华放射肿瘤学杂志

ABSTRACT

In recent years, immunotherapy has become the hottest topic in the field of oncology. Both the Keynote189 study and the Keynote407 study have confirmed that progression-free survival is significantly prolonged in patients who have been benefited from immune checkpoint blockades in lung cancer. In an article published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2012, a case report of radiation abscopal effects caused by immunization combined with conventional radiotherapy has attracted great attention in the field of oncology. The Pacific study, published in 2017, expanded the indications for immunotherapy from advanced to locally-advanced non-small cell lung cancer. The second analysis of Keynote001, published in the Lancet Oncology in the same year, suggested that radiation therapy may mediate the immune memory effects, whereas the mechanism and time window are still unclear. With the publication of PEMBRO-RT study and several pieces of work by our team in recent years, various details of radiotherapy combined with immunotherapy (iRT) have become more mature. In clinical practice, iRT is involved in the full treatment of lung cancer. However, iRT is not a hodgepodge or stew that needs further refinement and sorting. In this article, the principles, efficacy in clinical practice, and exploration of the details of iRT were discussed.