Jason Luke, MD, Discusses Advancement of Immunotherapy For Metastatic Disease at 2021 ESMO

At the 2021 European Society of Medical Oncology Congress, CancerNetwork® spoke with Jason Luke, MD, of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, about advancements in immunotherapy that he’s excited about and how they may improve outcomes in patients living with metastatic disease. 

Transcript:

Across oncology, I think what’s exciting is a two-fold advancement in immunotherapy. One [area of advancement] is adjuvant clinical trials where we’re starting to apply immunotherapies to avoid metastatic disease altogether. Given the safety profile of checkpoint blockade, I’m really excited about that and that will lead to an improvement in the long term in terms of reduction in metastatic burden.

The other side of it is there’s a lot of developmental immunotherapies that are being developed. Those are new drug targets, as well as novel engineering approaches of immunotherapies. I’m really excited also about that next generation of immunotherapies that are coming along, to expand the utility of immunotherapy and reduce our reliance to chemotherapy over many lines of treatment for metastatic disease.